Chapter 39: Images

“Berlin?”
“Yeah, I thought you could finally make some use of that big mouth of yours.” Tatyana Sokolov opened a copy of Brigitte and started picking her ensembles for the mission. “Your German is better than mine.”
Michael glanced around casually at the surrounding tables and street crowds that made up the Parisian street cafe, taking time to be security minded since Tanya refused to be. They seemed to be in the clear, but he had to wonder why they had traveled to Paris first on a trip from Prague to Berlin.
“It’s about time you admitted that I’m better at something.”
“You still have to prove yourself to have leadership qualities, Christiansen. Until I sign off on you, you’re nothing more than a tool to me.”
“I’ve planned our last three missions to perfection, made life a living hell for the Swiss, and found that mole in the Warsaw branch...”
Tanya’s eyes flickered with a mix of annoyance and anger, a sign he had seen a lot of recently whenever she was trying to get something across to him.
“You’re technically competent, Michael, but you have yet to learn what it is to be a team. When I said you were a tool, I meant it literally. I can send you in and get information, bodies, whatever I want, but you have no value beyond that, and that is what is so frustrating about you. You refuse to learn how to apply your skills in a form that can shape and manipulate others, be they friend or foe.”
He thought about that as he sipped his coffee and she returned to her magazine. He felt better working alone. There was no one to worry about, no one to order him around from over his shoulder. He could accomplish the mission his way and be done with it. But Tanya was constantly telling him to think broader, to expand the scale and scope of an action to a point where he needed others to help. He really did not see why he needed to do that if everything was going so well so far. 
As missions went, their station had a perfect record due to the abilities they all brought to the table. They were all perfectly tuned to their positions.
“We’re doing well enough as it is. We haven’t failed yet.”
She guffawed from behind her pages, not even justifying the comment with the lowering of her magazine. “You’ll never learn, Michael. Your luck can’t hold out forever, and when it fails you, it’ll be spectacular. I don’t want to be anywhere near you at the moment you realize how incredibly ignorant you are.”
The sun was suddenly obscured as a woman stopped at their table. She smiled apologetically, then spoke in a Meridionally accented French.
“Excuse me. Are you the woman who lost her phone in the hotel lobby?”
Tanya looked up from her magazine and tried to focus through the accent, something Michael was entirely unable to do with his functional metropolitan French.
“Err... Yes. It is blue and gray, and has a picture of a puppy on it.”
“Good.” The woman sat down in a chair from the vacant table next to theirs, handing over a phone similar to the described one, a phone Michael knew Tanya never had. “Emily Lanstrom, science and technology branch, at your service.”
Tanya took the phone and thumbed it open to look at it. “How long have you been here, Emily?”
“I finished my time at Camp Peary six months ago and was assigned here immediately after.”
“Did you know Jose Cruz?”
The young woman blinked, a sign that Michael read as her wondering if she should actually answer the question. Jose Cruz was an enigmatic man in the S&T division that you only met, and only then learned the name of, if you were exceptional. It was an institutional secret, one the S&T’s tried to keep solidly within their ranks, and could not be spoken of by just anyone. 
Michael had met Cruz when he had successfully bugged the man’s office for a week before detection, having been ordered to by his technical instructor. There were always exceptions to the rule that it stay inside S&T, and Tanya seemed to be another outstanding performer.
“I- I’m not sure who you mean.”
She was playing it safe by not answering, but her duplicity would need some work to be convincing. Tanya actually smiled at her and patted the woman’s arm. 
“It’s okay, you don’t have to answer. I met him four years ago when I planted a can of silly string in his bottom desk drawer, rigged to nail him in the face upon opening it. He was mad, thinking it was one of his people, but he calmed down when he found out it was someone from Operations, acting on orders from the boss. I got to meet him then...quite a character. He couldn’t figure out how I got pass the cameras in the hallway. I never told him that I had crawled in through the vent, even when he asked.”
“I see...” Emily ordered a coffee and began to relax, having got past the hardest part of making contact. “So what are my orders?”
“We’re taking the night train to Germany. As of now, Miss Lanstrom, you are assigned to the Prague branch. It’s good to have you on board.”  Tanya shook her hand and returned to her magazine, having dispensed with the pleasantries.
“So what do we do in the meantime?” Michael watched the new recruit as he spoke, curious about her and her unorthodox mode of speech.
“Well, I have to go shopping. If you two need anything for the trip, now is the time to get it. We’ll meet at the station a half-hour before departure. I’ve arranged for a private berth, but you two are going to have to share space after the change-over in Cologne.”
As Michael looked at Emily’s face to find the expected amount of reluctance, the world flashed brightly, as if from a nuclear explosion.
And things were different.
He was suddenly in a utility tunnel of a warehouse, condensation dripping here and there off of pipes, and he realized that things were out of order. 
“Michael, give me the situation.”
Tanya’s voice was coming from the radio in his ear, pulling him from one concern and turning him towards another. The mission was going as planned so far, and the readout on his display showed the image from the camera he had placed in the meeting room of their targets.
“All targets are present. Lets start the show.”
Emmy patted him on the shoulder and flipped the safety off of her radio controller, readying for the blast she had rigged.
“Lets give them the works.”
“Do it!” 
Emmy pressed the flashing red button and they waited for the blast to flare in the monitor, but nothing happened.
“Um... Okay...”
She pressed it again with the same result, switched channels and tried again, all resulting in a lack of explosion.
“What’s happening?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Are you sure you set them right?” Tanya’s voice was already bordering on hostile, her short fuse no doubt due to her recent late-night booze and pill mixers.
“Yes, I know I did. I don’t make mistakes with explosives.” Emmy tried to focus on what could be wrong, finally realizing that the cover was loose on the controller’s safety button, the one that activated the disarming circuits of the charges. “Michael? Did this get dropped?”
“Yeah. It fell off of the table a little while ago when I grabbed my bag off of it.”
“Shit!” She keyed her mike, already knowing what was going to happen. “Tanya, we...uh...have a problem.”
“What?”
“The fail-safes were activated when the controller fell off of the table earlier. We can’t set off the charges.”
“WHAT!!??”
Michael winced as the woman’s voice sounded in his ear, rattling several fillings.
“The fail-safes I put in have a disarming circuit that burns out the processor on the receiver. This is so once it’s activated, it can’t be set off without checking it physically. The idea is that if you’re using it, something has gone wrong and needs checked on.”
They could hear her kicking things around the room her over-watch position was in, her radio on voice-activated transmit.
“Shit, she’s mad.”
“Yeah...”
The noises faded into a heavy breathing, a sign that her reasoning mind was back in control.
“Okay... Plan C: Get your asses up there and kill them any way you can. Work as a pair. No one leaves alive. Do you copy?”
“We copy.”
“DO IT!”
They took all of their weaponry at hand and started running towards the exit of the tunnel, towards the ground level where the bad-guys were, confident that they could make their mistakes right.

The flash happened again and Michael was looking at the blood-splattered face of Tanya, her stiletto in hand and the corpse of their primary target at her feet.
“Michael... Where’s Emmy?”
He had to think, the flash and sudden change in place making things hard to focus on. 
“I-uh...I think she went to the west end.”
“You let her go alone?” Her hand reached out and grabbed the collar of his shirt, pulling him right up into her face. “God Damn it, Michael! I told you to stick together!”
“I thought I would press ahead to here while she covered that end.”
There were shots, high-pitched rifle shots that echoed across the cavernous interior of the building.
“Emily, respond!”
“I’m pinned down. Need help here!”
“Damn it!” Tanya sheathed her knife and picked up the AK-47 a guard had dropped as he went down, checking the magazine quickly before racking the bolt. “Michael, this is exactly why I keep telling you to stop doing things alone. Going it alone is only going to get those who aren’t as lucky as you killed.”
He thought about that as he checked the rifle he had taken earlier.
“Now we have a protracted gun battle, the cops are on their way, and we have to save someone who would not be in a bad spot if it weren’t for you. I hope your ego is fucking satisfied.”
She led the way from the office and through the stacks, and down a long hallway to the other part of the warehouse. Shooting had stopped there and from their vantage point they could see that Emmy was being held at gunpoint, waiting to be executed.
“Come out now and I promise you your deaths will be quick.” The voice was of the second-in-command of the group, now the leader with their master’s execution.
Tanya motioned Michael to move to a different position between the stacks, trying to make sure they both had a good shot at the three men holding Emmy. They split up and worked their way along, making every effort not to be seen.
“This one dies in ten seconds if you do not answer surrender.” His gun was right against Emmy’s head, ready to fire. “One...”
Michael found a spot beneath a workbench, the containers for different do-dads hiding him while providing a perfect place to fire from. 
“Four...”
Tanya stalked carefully beside a crate on the far side from Michael, planning to catch the men in crossfire. It was going to be close, but she knew Michael was going to put his marksmanship to the test, so all she had to do was take down the target closest to her.
“Seven...”
The sights on the rifle seemed canted, a problem with the cheaper Romanian AK’s that were working their way out of storage. Michael was going to have to make the shot right with a guess.
“Nine... Good bye.”
The tip of the front sight was in place where he thought it should be.
The trigger broke and the world flashed again, but the sight picture his mind captured was of Emily’s head exploding as his shot went wide.

He gasped for breath at the shock of it, trying desperately to comprehend what was happening to the history he remembered. Emmy was still alive! His shot did not even come close to her, as the steel-cored bullet went through the pistol in the man’s hand, disabling it, and caught one of his guards in the liver. Tanya had opened fire and took out the other guard as Michael turned his sights on the tormentor, finishing him with a pair of shots to the chest.
Why were things happening differently?
He and Tanya were now running through the warehouse, the duffle bag of their equipment now heavier with the explosives they were recovering. The cops would be there any moment, and they could not afford to get caught there.
“I’ve finished, Tanya. I’m heading for the car.”
“Roger that. Meet us behind the restaurant as planned. If we’re not there in thirty minutes, go underground and don’t come up until you’re clear.” She pulled the tape off of the charge she had just found, tossing it into her bag.
“Understood.”
Michael cut the last charge off of the post and met her at the door to the utility tunnel, just as the first of the German police cars pulled up outside. They barred the door and gathered the rest of the gear quickly, leaving nothing to be found, and then ran for the far end of the tunnel. A hatch linked it with the sewers and they took a winding path through them before climbing out into an isolated alleyway between apartments.
They stopped to rest, feeling exhausted from the fear that had so far remained buried behind the will to escape without forgetting anything.
“Damn it...”
Michael had to agree. “Yeah...”
“Damn you, Michael. I never want to see you fuck up that badly again.”
“Yeah. I know.”
He could feel her anger towards him. She still felt that he was taking things too lightly. As tired as she was from sleepless nights, she could not tell that he had learned his lesson.
“If you ever do that again, I will fucking kill you.”
She started to get up from her crouched position against a wall but froze in place; her eyes locked onto something in a way that Michael knew meant danger. He turned to see where her gun was now pointing, his heart skipping painfully at the sight of a young boy with a soccer ball who was staring at them.
“Fuck all...”
Her eyes were hard slits as she thumbed the hammer of her Beretta back, pointing the end of the suppressor carefully in order to silence yet another obstacle in the way of their escape.
“Tanya... What are you doing?”
“I’m cleaning. Leave me alone.”
Michael could see that she was serious. She was going to kill an innocent kid to make things work.
The next thing he knew he was on top of her, wrestling the gun from her grip and screaming for the kid to escape in the best German he could muster at that moment. She was strong, chemically strong in the way drunks and drug addicts could be, and it took all he had to hold her arms and legs from landing blows as he tried desperately to calm her down.
There was still blood on her face from her last victim, and the sight clashed with the mix of pleading and hateful looks her eyes bored into him with. He could feel her weakening, her body giving out, and if he could hold on just a little longer, things would be okay.
“Please... Please let me die... I can’t go on...”
The rain was starting again and droplets fell on her face, running down and collecting the blood as it passed. Tanya was exhausted, her mind barely conscious, but Michael could no longer bear to see her like she had been, wasting away in a prolonged attempt to die.
“Tanya... Please just live. Live for me, and I’ll live for you.”
He brought her hands to her face, wiping some more of the blood off as the rain began in earnest, and he felt her body relax as she began to drift into unconsciousness. She was smiling softly.
A shot sounded close to Michael’s ear and he felt Tanya’s blood spray him. There was a crimson hole in her forehead, just above her right eye, and the back of her head was bloody wreckage. He looked up and recognized the face of Ian Amherst, clad in Death’s robes, blacker than the darkened, stormy skies.
“No!”
The muzzle of the gun pressed against Michael’s forehead and he could see the evil smile of the man as the trigger was being pulled. 
This wasn’t what happened. This wasn’t the way it happened at all!
“NOOOO-”

“Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.”
Jamie looked up from the clothes she was folding, finding a look of concentration on Carol’s face as she read from a small notebook.
“Sigmund Freud. You know, the philosopher?”
“Psychologist, Carol. The man was a psychologist, and not a very good one at that. I can’t see how anyone with such pessimistic and conflicting views on humanity could ever help anyone feel better about themselves. What was that one? ‘Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires’?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Not really.” Jamie put the folded shirt in place and moved onto the table of jeans that was awry. “Religion is a very real and necessary thing. Perhaps Freud’s argument has a bit of merit in that we all long for acceptance and forgiveness from something or someone higher than ourselves, but it’s not an illusion. Those with no religious beliefs of any kind are some of the most miserable people in existence, because if you can’t believe that bad things happen to you for a reason, or as part of some greater plan, or even as punishment for something, then you’re stuck in a pit of your own making. If you realize that, and then realize you have no clue on how to get out, then you begin to think that you might as well end it all, and that’s just sad.”
“You’re not proving your argument, Jamie.” Carol smiled and continues straightening the clothes on the racks, enjoying the razzing of her friend.
“My proof is in the way that religion helps people cope. The hand of God comforting a person who has lost everything precious to them is not a figment of the imagination, because no matter how bad that person wants things to be better than they are, their life at that moment is in the hole. When your life had sunk that far, no wishing or good feeling is going to get you out of it. It takes something bigger than ourselves to make that climb, and it is tangible and very real to those who accept it. I’ve seen it.”
“Seen it, huh?” The skeptical look was accompanied by a smile.
“Yes.”
Angela popped up behind Jamie and wrapped her arms around her, squeezing tight. “Guess what? I’ve got a date tomorrow night!”
“That’s great!” The happy feeling Jamie and Carol shared for their friend was replaced quickly by the memory of the schedule. “Wait a minute, Angie... you’re the only one working tomorrow night.”
The girl shrugged apologetically. “I know- that’s why I was going to ask one of you to cover for me.”
Jamie and Carol looked at each other, both sure the other had plans.
“You were going to be with Michael tomorrow, right Jamie?”
“Er, yeah.” As she thought about it, something didn’t seem right about the whole scene.
“And I had mass with my parents.”
“Oh, c’mon, guys...You know I’ve been waiting for this guy to ask me out. Can’t one of you skip out, just this once?”
It was a tough decision. Jamie did not want to force something on Carol, but she felt like something was very definitely wrong with her, and that made her want to want to ask Michael about it. It finally came down to her friend’s pleading face, reminding her so much of the way Maria begged for favors, and she knew she could not say no.
“Okay, Angie. I’ll cover for you.” She grinned impishly as her friend hugged her again excitedly. “But you have to be sure to tell me every single detail.”

There was a flash of light and she found herself alone in the fashions department, still folding clothes. It was raining outside now, she could see through the front doors, and that meant it was another day. Her mind spoke up and told her it was the next day, the day she was supposed to meet Michael. 
The thought made her pull out her cell phone and call, hoping that he would not be mad at her for breaking their engagement. His phone rang many times, but he never picked up, surprising given that he was always so eager to listen to her.
“Hey, Jamie?”
Jamie turned to face her supervisor, slipping the cell phone into her pocket and hoping she had not been noticed breaking the rules again.
“Hi.”
“Listen, they’re backed up again up front. Can you go open a till and cut the lines down a bit? It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.”
“Sure.”
Jamie walked to the front of the store but stopped when she found herself surrounded by the sporting goods department. Something was not right with the layout of the store as she remembered. Fashions was always nearest the front and so she should not be getting lost on the way there. She picked a direction at random and went that way, winding between aisles and finally arrived at the front, more confused than ever within her mind.
She picked a lane and put a drawer into the register, flipping on the light above. It was strange that she was the only person working the checkouts- hadn’t the manager told her that someone else was there?
“Lane three is open, no waiting.”
The customers in line shuffled over; lining up with the usual arguments about who was first and whatever else they thought was so important.
Jamie forced her programmed smile at the first man. “Did you find everything you needed today?”
She felt a cold shock to her spine as she saw the face of the man, her stomach flipping with the fear she suddenly felt. The man was the one from the apartment in Rome, the man she had shot when they were saving Priscilla. The jagged hole in his head from her two nine millimeter bullets still oozed blood, dark and thickly it dripped from his chin onto the floor.
“Yes, I found everything just fine.”
“Great!” She hid her fear and disgust as best she could, sliding the bucket of blood across the scanner. The lack of lid made sure that the contents slopped onto the counter, making a mess of things.
“Hey! Be careful with that. Thanks to you I need all that I can get.”
What was happening? Was this some kind of dream? It had to be, because nothing else made sense.
“I’m- I’m sorry, sir. I’ll just get something to wipe it up with.”
“Don’t bother. I don’t want it any more.” The man picked up the bucket and poured it over her head, soaking her in the still-warm, coppery tasting liquid.
Her stomach heaved violently at the smell but there was nothing in her to come up, making the action so much more unpleasant. In the time that it took for her to settle down, the man had gone, making way for the next person in line.
It was Colonel Lombardi, looking sharp in his uniform in spite of the numerous holes in it from the grenade. The eye in the remaining side of his face looked at Jamie and he smiled cruelly.
“It looks like things are not going well for you tonight. Don’t worry, miss, it’ll only get worse.” 
If this was happening within her mind, then there was something very seriously wrong. Her programming was supposed to prevent her from feeling remorse for the killing she did, so why was she dreaming this?
The colonel checked out and proceeded to dump his bucket of blood on her as well, and so it went for the numerous other people she faced, all of whom she had killed.
The line finally shrunk down, only two people were left, and Jamie felt her tears mixing with the blood on her face. She had killed so many people and never really shed a tear over it. They were bad people, people who deserved to die, and so why was she suffering like this?
She did not look up at the next person in line. She didn’t want to know who it was or remember what she had done to them. Her hand grabbed the merchandise from the counter and slid it across the scanner, feeling confusion at the fact that it wasn’t the usual bucket of blood, but a human head. She rolled it over to get a look and then dropped it in shock, screaming at the top of her lungs as the shocked face of Michael met her eyes.
It was Michael’s head she had been holding. She couldn’t understand why or how, as the reasoning portion of her brain had shut down and left her with only the ability to scream and tremble at the sight. Her eyes looked at the customer and she recognized the face of Ian Amherst, the embodiment of Death.
“You should not have left him alone. It’s your fault he’s dead.”
The man took the head and moved on, smiling evilly at the cowering Jamie as he passed.
She’d had enough. She wanted out of there. Dream or no dream, her mind screamed for any purchase left for her sanity to grab hold of among the waves of guilt being heaved at her.
It was a struggle to think clearly, but she knew that she only had one person left to face before it would all be over with, and if she could make it past that person, she might wake up from this nightmare.
Jamie grabbed onto the counter and pulled herself up from the floor where she had been cowering, feeling the blood sticking to her body like glue, its smell overpowering. 
“Di- did you f-find everything o-okay?”
“Yes, Jamie.” 
A soft, beautiful voice spoke the words, and the clash with the grotesque scene around her made Jamie look up without thinking, her mind seeking any and all relief from the horrors around her. Janet Wells was there, smiling softly, if hesitantly, as she looked at the blood everywhere.
“I’ve found everything I have ever needed. I am complete, but you still have a ways to go.” She pulled a candy bar from the rack next to her and held it out for Jamie to ring up. “I was worried that you were truly lost, but from the look on your face, you are understanding what it means to be human. They could not take it from you.”
Jamie tears flowed uncontrollably, washing the blood from her face as she wiped at them. “Why? Why do I have to suffer like this?”
“Because even if you must kill to survive, you cannot forget what it costs your soul. The people you hate are like that, and now they have no soul left to guide them. Losing one’s soul is not an easy thing. It takes time and effort, and an embracing of evil that is hard to comprehend. I was afraid that you had fallen into that.”
“But I haven’t! I fight to live and let others live!”
“I know that. I had to remind you of the costs, though, as there are some who wish you to ignore it. Don’t let it stop you from doing what must be done, but never forget that you are still responsible for every life you take. You are free to choose your fate and are also responsible for that choice.”
Janet paid and began to walk away but Jamie grabbed her arm in an iron grip, desperate not to let go of the one sane thing in this dream.
“Please? What was the meaning of Michael’s head? Is he going to die?”
Janet smiled, smirking at the hopeless girl beside her. “Jamie, we all will die. Angie, Carol, our parents...They’re all already dead. Michael and yourself will follow in time. It’s just how things go. What should be important to you is how you spend your time with him, and how you can protect him from that man.” She nodded at the door where Ian Amherst was watching them, still holding Michael’s head.
“What should I do?
“That... That is for you to figure out. It’s not that hard Jamie. You do it without thinking. Bye now.” She slipped from Jamie’s grip and waved as she walked towards the door. “Remember: Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart. Customer service is important.”
Jamie tried to follow, her eyes pouring tears as she sought more insight from her former self. She needed to understand more.

Jamie awoke in darkness, her face and pillow soaked in her tears and the blanket clutched tightly in her arms. It was a horrible, horrible dream, and one she never wanted to have again. 
The bed was angled funny and she turned her head, able to make out Michael’s hunched over form against the slightly lighter darkness of the windows. She placed a hand on his back and felt the sobs coming from inside him.
“I’m sorry, Jamie. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. I had a nightmare and woke up on my own. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” His hand reached out and flipped open his phone that was on the nightstand. A few deft button pushes dialed a number and he put it to his ear, waiting for an answer to his rings.
“Mm...Yeah?”
“It’s me. I-uh...I just needed to hear your voice.”
“Michael? This is really strange... Is everything okay?”
Jamie could hear the conversation and could tell that it was Emmy that he was speaking with. She was concerned, as well she should be with his calling in the middle of the night with a request like that.
“Yeah, Emmy. I just needed to know you were okay. I’m sorry to wake you.”
“Michael, I-“ He cut off the call and set the phone aside, rubbing his face to try to get some bearings again. 
“You had one too?” By which Jamie meant a nightmare.
“Yeah. Things weren’t happening the way they should. I dreamt that she was killed by a stray shot from my rifle. I had to make sure that she was okay.”
“I see.”
Jamie’s dream came back to her in it’s fuzzy, sepia-toned way, and the only thing she could take from it with any certainty was that she needed to be by his side to protect him.
“Michael?” Jamie rolled back over and tried to get comfortable again, knowing that sleep was unlikely again.
“Hm?”
“Do you see the faces of the people you kill?”
Normally the question would have made him look at her, searching for signs that she was malfunctioning, but somehow, after that dream, it was a question that seemed appropriate for even a cyborg to ask.
“Yes. I see them more clearly than those of the people I have lost.”
“They why don’t you stop? If the people who deserve to die are taking more of your soul than those you love, why don’t you find some way to stop?”
This made him turn around and look at the curled up young woman beside him. In her eyes were fresh tears, signs that she was thinking about her own plight.
“Because I’m an evil person. Since that first man in Prague, I’ve been tainted. It’s like a drop of black dye in white paint. No matter how much white paint or how small of a drop of black, that white will never be as bright again. Since then, it has become the job. I don’t like it, Jamie, just as you shouldn’t, but it’s no longer something I can say I find offensive.”
“Does that make me an evil person? If my purity has been lost through the stench of blood and gunfire, does that mean I am gray as well?”
“No, Jamie. You are not responsible for what we have made you. But if we keep this up, there will be-“
“You’re wrong.” Her hard tone silenced his attempt to make her feel better. “If it’s about individual choice, I made it in that basement in Paris. When I killed that man with my hands, I stepped across the line into the darkness that you are in. Darkness... It was a choice I made, not one that was forced on me by what I am or what I’ve been told. I used my power to destroy, deliberately.” 
She rolled over and glared at him, tired of being soothed in Michael’s patronizing way. “Stop trying to tell me that I’m still an innocent. Maybe Henrietta or Rico are still innocent, but there’s no way I can be. It’s one of the ways that you are keeping me at a distance- insisting that I’m somehow better than you. You and I are the same, Michael. We both have chosen to bear a burden, to close our eyes and see those we’ve killed. If I’m going to have to bear that burden, I want you to understand that I am doing it as a woman, not an innocent girl. You wouldn’t think that way of Tanya or Emmy, so don’t think that I’m any different.”
“You put yourself on a high pedestal by comparing yourself to them.”
“No. We’re all in the gutters, Michael. We are people who scheme and kill for the benefit of others. The benefits rarely reach us, and we take all of the risks. We live, we kill, and we die. We’re no better than animals, and that is why we are treated as such.”
She had thought it out at some point, he could tell. It was the truth of their work, and she figured it out at the age of eighteen. Regardless of how cruel a life it was, it was a job that had to be done, and while it was something she did not like, she was willing to learn to cope with it. She was mature beyond her years, but there was a little ways to go still.
“So why don’t we quit?”
Jamie rolled back onto her side and pulled a blanket over her. “Because quitting means good people die. The truly innocent don’t belong here with us, and they don’t deserve to die, unaware of the reason why.”
“So what you are saying is that we are fated to be what we are?”
Jamie became quiet again, her breathing the only sound in the dark room. It was a long time before she answered, and he had started to think she had fallen back asleep.
“It might be Fate, Michael. Then again, if we are to believe we might have any control over our own destiny, as we both think we are, then we were merely fated to have to make a decision. Our decision sealed our fates.”
He lay back in the bed and thought about that circular logic. They were fated to make a choice between being innocent and being tainted, and by choosing to be the tainted, they arrived where they were.
“Jamie?”
“Hm?”
“What would you have done if you hadn’t gone to Europe with your friends?”
“I haven’t thought about it except for a brief moment when the knife slashed into me. The only thing I had time to think about was whether Carol and Angie would be getting me the same CD again or not for my birthday.” She laughed softly, shifting again on her pillow to get more comfortable. “It’s funny how the mind wanders to the least important things when it’s so close to death.”
“Yeah. When I was fading in and out of consciousness after getting shot, I kept thinking to myself that it was going to be hard to get the blood stains out of my shirt, and that I would need a new jacket entirely.”
“I think that shows just how foolish we are as a species.” This was mumbled into the pillow as she started to drift back into sleep.

Chapter 40

Jamie had thought about things through most of Saturday, mostly in the spa as she let the hot water relax her tense muscles. The quiet solitude allowed her to think all she wanted, perhaps more than she wanted, and she came to the decision she had to make at about the time that Michael had finished with his ‘meetings’ and joined her in the private bath.
“How long have you been in here?”
“Since lunch. I walked around the grounds a bit on a recon sweep first and then settled in here.” She lifted the iced tea from the small table beside her and sipped it, never opening her eyes.
“And?”
“There’s several new visitors, which isn’t uncommon, but I’m getting a feeling that we’re being watched in a casual kind of way. There hasn’t been anyone tailing me, so either they’re not there, or they’re really good.” By casual she meant that they were simply watching and waiting to move, rather than watching in order to make a move against them. The difference was in the level of aggression, with the latter making it easier to spot and identify.
“Such people are out there. I ran into a few in Prague.”
“Could it be Amherst?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. I’ve planted a few trees that will rustle if he gets too close and there is no way he can know about them. It won’t give us a lot of warning, but it will give us some.”
“Informants?” He had been working in the shadows for a few weeks, doing things that she did not know details of.
“Yes. Money is certainly a reliable bedfellow at times, and doubly so if the informants don’t know that they are telling me something important. Knowing the value means that they can be bought and turned against us.”
“I see.”
They soaked in silence for a while, listening to the ripples of water from each other’s movements. 
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll rust if you spend so much time in the water?”
It was a joke, Jamie knew- an attempt to lighten things between them a bit more. His unnecessary humor was something she had been missing for a while.
“Titanium frame with carbon-composites? I’ve been wanting to go to the beach since Maria said that she and Mario were going to Florida, so I don’t think a little hot mineral water is going to hurt any. You’re the one I’m worried about. Don’t let your water get too cold- you wouldn’t want to be embarrassed when you get out.”
She was smiling, her face relaxed as if deep in a dream, and her hand lazily flicked at the water. 
“When are you going to learn that I have nothing to be embarrassed about?”
“Hmm.”
Another silence as the steamed and hot water helped Michael to relax. He was going to need to be at his best for the next night.
“I’ve been thinking about how to tell him?”
“Eh?”
“Nicholas...”
“Oh. You’ve decided already?” He wasn’t surprised, merely concerned.
“I care about him, Michael, but I’m not sure whether it is love or not. It’s a question that I really won’t have the time or opportunity to answer, in any case, so I might as well put some distance between us sooner than later.”
“It’ll hurt.”
“I know. I’ve been shot, and blown up so many times already that I’m not sure I feel pain anymore.”
“This you will feel for a while, Jamie. It’ll always be there in the back of your heart. It was like that for me and Tanya, even more so after I met her again and said goodbye in Prague.”
She opened her eyes to look at him, questioning his motive. “Are you trying to tell me not to do it?”
“No. Just don’t burn any bridges, Jamie. You never know what time will bring your way, that’s all.”
Michael smiled at her and she understood what he was telling her. She should simply say goodbye in a way that would not crush the young man’s heart. It should also be quick and relatively painless.
“Okay. I’m supposed to meet him tonight after dinner on the balcony he showed me.”
“Balcony scenes are always full of drama. Just make sure he doesn’t decide to take a flying leap after you tell him.”
“He’ll be fine, Michael. He’s man enough to deal with things like this.”
She closed her eyes again and started walking through the plan. If she did not plan her words they might not come out correctly, if at all, and her patience that she had developed as a cyborg was probably the only thing that was going to get her through that moment.

“She’s missing again.”
Emily looked around at the crowd in the dining room, trying to find Jamie among the people. Michael glanced up but did not look around, pretty sure he knew what she was referring to.
“Who?”
“Jamie, your partner.”
“She has things of her own to attend to.”
“Interesting.”
The food was delicious yet again, which made it easier to forget the business before them both.
“Where’s Smith?”
Emmy glanced around again, but only Michael was familiar enough with her to know that it was done nervously. “He’s making the preparations. He liked what he saw in the data, but was frustrated that he could not send it along to the techs. How did you manage that, anyway?”
Michael smiled and sipped his wine, wishing desperately for a decent stiff drink. “It’s a secret.”
“Even from me?”
He was teasing her a bit with a technological trick that she could not figure out, and he could also see that she found it amusing.
“Especially from you. If I tell you, you could reverse it, and that would not be in my interests.”
“I see...” She sipped her wine and frowned, perhaps feeling slighted. Then again, maybe she was only acting. “You still don’t trust me?”
“It’s not personal, Emmy. Being on the run, having Tanya killed out from under me, and surviving several close brushes with death has made me reluctant to trust anyone.”
“Yet you trust Smith to come through on his end?”
“Did I say that?”
She flinched slightly, reading the deadly serious look in his eyes and feeling the signs that he had thus far been hiding with careful control of his body language. It was a shock to her system really, as she had never seen Michael so controlled and dangerous. He was always a man of action around her when they had worked together, and even when he had contacted her in Paris, he was not as covert in his ideas as he had been until now.
“There’s something... What are you planning?”
“I have insurance in case Smith screws with me. Your safest action would be to steer clear of us when the transaction goes down. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt. I can’t trust him, but I trust you.”
Michael read her face and saw a sudden realization come over it, but it was there only a fraction of an instant before she covered it again. 
“I don’t know if that’s possible, but I’ll try.”
Michael did not want Emmy there when Smith was killed. She had been a sudden complication to the equation from the start, and even though he had planned around her, he was still worried. The end of this matter was only a day away. Things had been prepared well in advance and it was only a moment’s decision from completion the way he wanted it. Little could go wrong, but Michael would spend the next day worrying about those little things and planning around them. 
“By the way, Smith said that he thought someone might be watching you. Do your friends know enough to keep tabs on you?”
Jamie’s observations that afternoon were apparently correct. Who it might be was uncertain but the fact that the CIA people had twitched to it meant that it was either Amherst or the agency.
“No. They might still have some doubts about my total loyalty, but I still have freedom to move around. If they are watching me, it’s because they might know something else that worries them about my safety.”
“Amherst?” 
“Yeah, maybe.”
The table was cleared and Michael relaxed a little as he watched Emmy eat a small dish of ice cream, or whatever the fancy name was that expensive restaurants used. She seemed content at the moment to let things play out, and there was not any hint of the deceptiveness that she seemed to have the previous night. Maybe it was just his nerves acting up under the strain of his work.
“I got a call from Katherine last night.” The last spoonful was gone so she slid the bowl aside and leaned forward on the table, almost as if telling a secret. “She and her admirer spent a romantic evening out last night.”
“Really?” The tone clearly spelled out that it had been all night, not just the evening. “That’s... that’s great. Good for her!”
“I know, right? I haven’t had a date in quite a long time and she comes off of her misery-tour and finds someone special that fast. When I get back, I’m going to go hunting.”
He laughed with her, both knowing that Emmy was no huntress, even with as much as she had expanded and matured as an operative. Her brashness reminded him a lot of someone else he had known.
“It’s the way it goes, I guess... Someone loses someone close, and someone finds someone to get close to.”
He was thinking of Tanya, Emmy could see, and the painful look she caught a momentary glimpse of was quickly washed away behind the sip of his wine glass.
“It still hurts?”
He nodded from behind a somber look. “It’ll always hurt, Emmy. But I’m not one to destroy myself, so I’m still moving along as best I can.”
“I could tell that last night. You didn’t flinch when I hugged you- you even seemed relieved by it. Even with a friend like Jamie by your side, are you still that lonesome?”
“Jamie’s a great kid, shaping up to be a fine woman, but after Tanya’s death, I guess I just needed to feel like I was among our family- the one we had back then. That makes it a lot easier to cope with.”
“Family is supposed to be like that. We were all close back in Prague and raising Hell over Eastern Europe. Even with the dangers, it was a lot of fun.” She broke out into a smile as one of the many memories came back. “Hey! Do you remember when Gunter went over the back wall of the house he was bugging? The people came back and he had to dive head first over it, and landed in a freshly composted flowerbed?”
“I remember. He looked like an ostrich with his head buried like that. I was lucky I pulled him out as fast as I did, because it was still pretty soggy from the rains. He would have drowned.”
Emmy had broken out into an uncontrollable laughter. “And then Tanya made you two walk back because she didn’t want the car dirtied up with the sludge!”
They both laughed long and hard about it, letting the laughter taper off into the memory of what came next. 
“That was the last time I ever saw him smile.” Emily’s saddened face was a harsh contrast with the previous moment. “I left for Dresden the next day for a week, and he and Tanya went to Rybnik a few days later. He was killed in that auto accident there. You know, the one with the petrol tanker?”
Michael nodded, knowing the feeling she was having. “Yeah, I remember.”
“God, I loved his smile. It was the only thing about him I liked, but there it was when I needed it to lift me up a bit.”
Another silence settled in, one that Michael had decided to break with the truth.
“It wasn’t an accident.”
“Huh?”
“Tanya told me that it wasn’t an accident.”
It was the first shred of doubt that Emily had ever heard of in the matter. “They got to him?”
“No. We got to him. He was playing both sides of the field.”
Emily sat with mouth agape at what she was hearing. “He was turned? When?”
“Some time before Christmas that year, Tanya got a call from the DDO about it. I don’t know what was said, in fact I’m guessing that it was even about him, but as I watched her listening to the phone, I saw her get angry. She covered it immediately by turning away, but from then on, she seemed loaded down with the work. You remember how she always used to play poker with us?”
“Yeah. She started declining about that time. She would sit back and read reports, occasionally looking up at us while we played.” It was making sense now. “She also started going off on her own a lot more at night, especially to see the contacts.”
“From what I could guess afterwards, she spent a little time with the informants and set up her own little mole-hunt for him, just to verify. One of them passed off the bad info to him and he dutifully reported it to Langley and the Polish cell of the SVR. Three weeks later, she took him to Rybnik and came back alone.”
“She told you this?”
“Some of it. Even back then we had pillow-talk. When she came back she was pretty shaken, and we would lie in bed in silence, every night until she finally could not hold it in anymore. She said that it wasn’t an accident, and that she had dealt with the turncoat in the only way she could come up with at the time. I pressed her for more, but she refused to elaborate. I found out the rest through a bit of careful study of things.”
“So it was sanctioned?” Somewhere along the line, someone had decided that the man had to die rather than be brought back in for punishment.
Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. I think so. Remember it was the same guy who turned me loose into the hands of the Paris mafia.”
“Yes.”
He sighed, now wishing he had a lot more to drink. “It hurt her a lot. Gunter saved her life in Warsaw when she was just a newbie. He had been around longer than anyone else on her team and she felt indebted to him. He also didn’t hold a grudge when she was promoted to lead the team. I can see now why that phone call made her look like she did. She wasn’t angry, she was in pain.”
“None of us knew the truth. Hell, none of us even suspected something was amiss.”
“Well, sometimes it’s best to keep the good memories alive inside us and just ignore the bad ones.”
“Yeah.”
Michael checked his watch and figured that it was about time to go back to his room. He had a long day coming and needed to be as fresh as possible for it.
“I think it’s time I said goodnight, Emmy. I have to check in with the office in case they’re getting panicky over anything.”
She stood with him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a friendly hug. “Be careful with Smith,” she whispered. “He’s kept me out of the loop in regards to your transaction, which can only mean he is watching out for me as well.”
“I understand.” 
As she let go, Michael caught another brief flash of uncertainty in her face, and it set his mind back to the previous evening and his feeling that she was hiding something from him. His face remained calm and unchanged, however, and he made his way out of the hall and out to the parking lot to make his call.
The night was crisp, yet edging towards warming up with the high-pressure front moving in. There were a few people milling about on the walkways, chatting away in what to him were unintelligible mutters. The moon was rising above the distant hills, and the smell of budding trees and shrubbery took Michael back to his teenage years and the enjoyment of the warmer evenings of spring that heralded the end of winter.
He thumbed the speed-dial on his phone and stepped down an embankment next to a bridge that ran over the small creek, using the natural sounds and earth to secure his call from anyone with a listening device.
“Ferro.”
“It’s me. We’re on for tomorrow night.”
“Good. Let me know if you need anything.” She sounded tired in spite of the relatively early time of night.
“Listen... Tell me honestly. Do you have a team watching out for me from the shadows?”
“Team? No, why?”
She sounded honest, at least honest enough that he was now starting to feel concerned about the eyes that seemed to be on him.
“Just a feeling I have, Ferro. Do me a favor and send one of the new, not-yet-active teams to Cremona and have them stand by. I’ll meet them there.”
“I think Marco is available. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
As his hand returned from placing the phone in his pocket, his thumb brushed over the cold steel of his pistol’s slide, calming the nerves and bringing a slight smile to the lips. If someone was hunting him, then so much the better.
Jamie was lying motionless on her bed when he arrived, her face planted into a pillow. She didn’t twitch as he entered, likely because of the sound his keys made as they bounced around in his pocket.
“I’m back!”  He shrugged off his jacket and removed his gun, resting it on the nightstand and testing it’s position to make sure that he would have a perfect shooting grip on it should he need it in a hurry. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll live.” She rolled her head until she could breathe again. “I told him.”
“What did you say?”
“I said whatever came to my head on the spot. The lies just flowed out and he bought every word of it. That you and I were leaving tomorrow night for the new position you have in the company, and that the things he and I shared were something I’ll always cherish.”
Michael sat down beside her and patted her back, lending a little support to her. “You won’t cherish them?”
“I’d rather forget them. At least it would stop this pain inside.”
“I’ll tell you what I told Emmy tonight: Sometimes it best to keep the good memories inside us and just ignore the bad ones. It’s not easy and it’s not permanent, but it can help ease the pain a little.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
The light was switched off and Michael rolled over into his pillow, clutching it tight as his memories of Tanya started flooding back, having relaxed the dam that had been holding them in check. He shut his eyes tightly and willed himself not to cry, refusing to worry the young woman in the other bed with something that was impossible to fix.
“Michael?”
“... Yeah?”
“It doesn’t work.”
“I know.”

The morning came quickly, but without the nightmares that had plagued them both the previous night. Michael enjoyed the sight of the peaceful Jamie as she slept, stretched every which way across the bed and tangled up in her covers, and snoring softly. She was relatively harmless now- a state that would change drastically the moment she awoke and started thinking towards the evening’s events.
He rolled out of bed gently and stepped as quietly as possible to the other room, flipping on the television and muting it, then ordered room-service for a light breakfast to start the day. They had both taken a liking to the coffee the hotel served and if there was one good thing he would keep from this adventure, it was the appreciation of the expensive food.
Michael moved into the bathroom to start the day and as he exited ten minutes later, there was a rustling of the covers in the other room- a solid thump as Jamie rolled herself out of bed onto the floor. 
“Ugh... Mmph... I’m hungry.”
As if on cue, there was a knock on the door, to which Michael traded a fair tip for a tray of coffee and assorted fruits and breads. Jamie stumbled out of the bedroom and sagged into a chair, still not quite awake.
“You know, you’re starting to sound like Maria when you wake up. ‘Food! Food! Foooooood’!”
The coffee snapped her awake in an instant. “My metabolism is twice yours, maybe higher, and I get a lot more exercise. On top of that, I have been eating this rich-person food with such small portions, so as a result I’m slowly starving. If I’m going to be of any use tonight, I have to get some strength built up.”
A peach disappeared in less than five seconds, victim of a two-bite attack from the girl. Michael managed to snag an apple from the bowl before Jamie took it into the bedroom to eat while getting dressed. “What’s the dress code for tonight?”
“Casual, with a hint of Russian.”
“I think I can do that. It just means I have to look like I’m depressed or unhappy with everything, right?”
“Funny.” 
The news in Italy was bland on the best of days, being largely a political tool, so he flipped to the cable news channels to get an eye on things back in the U.S. Things were moving along a lot smoother there as of late, but it only made Michael remember the fact that he could not return there.
“ ‘I bet they’re asleep in New York. I bet they’re asleep all over America’. Dreaming dreams of freedom and prosperity.”
“That’s not in the movie.” Jamie returned to the room and placed the empty fruit bowl back on the tray, the cores and peels providing evidence of a ravenous beast’s existence. She downed another cup of coffee before going to the bathroom to brush her teeth. 
“Huh?”
“That last part- It’s not in Casablanca.”
“Oh, yeah. Next was the gin-joint line.”
She leaned against the doorway, staring at him as she slowly brushed. “You miss it, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I’ve been missing it more of late. Tonight will be the final step in alienating us from our original homes.”
The thought worked in Jamie’s mind as she finished with her teeth. They were both exiles of sorts, but that wasn’t the same as throwing it away or turning one’s back to a home.
“Saturdays...”
“What?” 
“I miss Saturdays. Waking up and realizing that the whole weekend was ahead of you, if only you made the effort to get out of bed. Concerts and barbecues, cartoons, and the afternoon in the sun...” Her blue eyes twinkled a little as she spoke and reminded him that he wasn’t alone here in Europe.
“Yeah.” A thought struck him as he finished his coffee and it brought a smile to his lips. “When we get this bit of excitement over with, lets get some food and have a barbecue.”
“As in actually grilling something?”
“Sure. We’ll listen to some NASCAR on the radio, drink some beers, and grill up some steaks and ribs. It’ll be a lot of fun.”
He could see a sad smile on her face as she slipped her holstered gun into her jeans, a sign that she wasn’t buying into it at all. “Just the two of us, eh? That’ll be a whole lot of laughs.”
Michael could understand her frustration. It just wasn’t much fun without it being a party atmosphere. 
He pulled his jacket on after making sure his gun was snug in the shoulder holster and switched the TV off as he passed it. “Lets get things set up for tonight. Work is the best thing to take your mind off of the problems of the world.”
“Right. Everything is going to go as planned.”

It was quiet for a Sunday night in spring. A relatively warmer temperature, the lack of any breeze, and an eerie lack of insect noise made the walk to the stone bridge traversing the creek seem sinister in nature. It probably didn’t help, Michael thought, that the business of the night was premeditated murder.
Jamie was beside him, dressed in jeans, leather jacket, and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap, her hands tensed to go for her gun at an instant. She was as alert as she had been when she broke into Christobal Ricci’s mansion, with every subtle noise being picked up by her sensitive, unprotected ears, and followed up with a glance from the piercing blue eyes.
The light over the bridge was out, bathing it in darkness but for the rays of a two-thirds moon that peeked through the branches of nearby oak trees. The water babbled through the stones littering its length, causing a bit of interference in Jamie’s hearing that she was uncomfortable with, shifting nervously as they waited, his arm around her for support.
“Nervous?”
“No.” 
With the light of the moon, Michael could just make out her eyes; their pupils dilated so wide that she looked like an owl. Truly she was a creation better suited to her surroundings than any normal human.
“Footsteps. Two pair: men’s and ladies, with a slight rustling sound, like a nylon jacket.”
“Anything else?” Michael smiled at her ability, knowing that she was likely correct.
“We’re being watched by someone else.”
That got his attention, making him look around intently for a moment. “How do you know?”
“I can feel it.” Jamie moved away from his side to the far side of the bridge and stood peering into the blackness that was the wooded lane. 
“Mister Christiansen...” Randall Smith approached from Michael’s side of the bridge with Emily in tow; both dressed casually, though a significantly more expensive form of casual. 
“Mister Smith. I’ll be glad to get this over with tonight. I get the feeling that I’m starting to seem suspicious to the people in Rome.”
“Are they watching you?”
“No, at least I don’t think they are. They’re too busy chasing after Dante Giacomo to waste resources on watching me. Besides, I would know if anyone in the agency possessed the skills to tail me.”
“I see. Well, your reputation speaks for itself, so let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Smith hoisted an aluminum case onto the stone railing and opened the latches and lid, revealing stacks of Euros.
“Eight million dollars in Euros. You’ll get the rest when you turn over the data and key in Poland.”
Michael wasn’t fazed a bit by the lack of American Dollars- it wasn’t possible to fit anywhere near that amount in dollars in the Zero Halliburton case. He pulled a wrapped stack of the five-hundred Euro notes from the bottom of the case, randomly selected, and flipped through the stack to verify the authenticity. A glance at Smith’s smile proved to Michael that the man was on the level, at least this far, and that the case contained exactly the amount stated.
“Okay. I guess we can go along with this for the time being.” Jamie was beside him and started to take the case, but he brushed her hands away, keeping it for himself for the moment. 
The pair of CIA agents started to lead them off of the bridge and towards the parking lot, but Smith turned suddenly, aiming a suppressed Glock 19 at Michael’s head, only feet away. Jamie started to move to defend him but Emily’s hand held a Five-seveN and aimed it very purposefully at Jamie’s right eye, stopping her cold. It only took a glance at Emmy’s eyes to show that she had thought of every way out of the situation, and that her gun held duty-grade SS190 rounds, capable of piercing her chest armor, let alone killing her through the eyes.
“There are a few things we need to discuss, Michael. Namely the way you have set up multiple CIA agents and led them to their deaths.” Her voice was deadly serious.
It was news to him, but he could see in Emmy’s eyes that she was operating on information from Smith- information that led her to believe that Michael was guilty. She had been sitting on her knowledge, acting her heart out to avoid blowing the ‘surprise’ in his presence, and making sure that he was sufficiently off-guard to be taken down like this.
“I see. This was one hell of a set-up, Smith; I have to hand it to you. Emmy, your acting was incredible, and I don’t think even Tanya could have seen through it. I knew Smith might try to cross me, but I never suspected you to have it in you.”
He carefully set the case down, as slow as possible, and saw Jamie at the edge of his vision, seething like a trapped Ratel and waiting to strike if given half a chance.
“Now, you say that I’ve set up agents to die. I’d like to hear the evidence against me before you carry out my sentence. It has to be something pretty convincing to make a trusted ally turn on me.”
Smith relaxed slightly, feeling, quite rightfully, that he had won. He motioned for Emmy to tell him, so he could know it was the truth.
“It was hard to believe at first, but I knew when you told me your version of what happened to Gunter that you were the one behind it. Tanya wasn’t someone who would plan an accident of that scale and rely on only herself to carry it out. You were there, in Rybnik, and helped her to take him out. That’s how you were moved up in the team to her second-in-command. I checked into it last night with a couple of calls to people who owe me favors. At that time, Tanya was also checking up on you because she thought you might be in with Gunter and the Russians. It all clicked when you lied to me last night. You were working with him, and sold him out to move up the ladder and remove the suspicion on yourself.”
Michael couldn’t help himself. He laughed aloud- stunned by the evidence he had just heard. “That’s your proof? Jesus, Emmy, you’re being played. Is he the one that set you onto that?” He nodded at Smith and could tell by her eyes that he was right.
“Explain it!”
“Okay. Yes, I was there. I’m the one who rigged the small charge on the tanker to cause it to wreck into Gunter, who was being timed and positioned by Tanya. Her inquiries into my moves were conducted to eliminate me as a suspect in the leaking info. She couldn’t take the chance, as the phone call only said that there was a leak, and it was either Gunter or myself. I found out all of this afterwards.”
“Then explain Katherine’s husband and the other agent in Calais.” Doubt had started to creep into her mind and body, and that was a good thing because it would allow Jamie to strike. “They were agents that had worked the surveillance of you and Gunter, and had filed reports saying that you could be the leak. They never really trusted you in Paris, and disliked working under you. If you had been cleared, they would not have been so distrusting. Their deaths seems convenient for you, and the suspicious nature of it is why you were ousted.”
“That was an accident an bad judgment on my part. They died because I fucked up, not because I knew they were suspicious of me. Hell, I didn’t even know that they worked that case until just now. I always thought they simply didn’t like my command style.”
“Liar!” The gun twitched towards him and Jamie tensed to attack Emmy, but the solid aim of Smith’s gun at Michael made hold back, struggling for patience. “Even the Director had doubts of your loyalty by then. Every time you moved there were teams of people watching you, recording you, analyzing your actions...”
“And they had no definitive proof, so they could not bring me to trial. So they released me into the soup of my own making, hoping I would turn up dead. If I were guilty, they would have the evidence and I’d be rotting in prison. Even I’m not that careful and cunning.”
Even as he said it, he had to admit to himself that the evidence was certainly pretty convincing, if circumstantial. There was more, though, as what he had heard so far was not likely to shake her loyalty to him.
“C’mon, Emmy. What convinced you to turn on me? There has to be something more.”
“It was Tanya. She had me looking into the information held by Langley, since she had been coded out of it. The French theatre information was accessible to me because it was my area of operation, and I could get the sources-classified stuff that she couldn’t. It was my idea, because I knew that the deep-cover agents and sleepers in the region might have to be accessed at some time, and therefore I had to have access to their info. I started digging up the Excalibur murder information and came across your name, once again on the list of suspected people involved.”
“True. I was an unknowing participant in their target selection process. It’s something I regret not having realized earlier, as it would have saved lives. But that was after I was kicked out.”
“No! It was in regards to my sister!” There were tears now, and Michael could sense thing starting to go further south for him as she lost control. “You set her up in those months before you were kicked out. You were working, willingly, for Amherst all that time. The information crossed with the ties you had to the Paris mafia. You spent a lot of time building up contacts there, and the investigation into my sister’s murder led back to you as having set it all up as a payment to Excalibur from the mob.”
It was treading into pure misinformation now. There had never been such a connection, to his knowledge, in the rank and file of the underworld that he had infiltrated. He had been a misinformer, a liar, positioned to make the mob lean slightly in a direction that the CIA found advantageous at the moment.
“I couldn’t possibly have been in such a position.”
“Liar!”
Emmy’s gun swung onto his head and Jamie started to move to take advantage of it, but Smith was ready and switched targets to Jamie to cover. He carefully switched positions with her to keep the firing lines from crossing, taking up a position a half step in front of her and to the right side.
“Emmy, listen-“
“Shut up! I know it’s why you killed Tanya, too. You set her up because she was getting too close. She was gathering information for the agency on the program you’re involved in, and since she got too close, you had your friends in Ex-Co kill her.”
“Now you’re just talking crazy. I loved her. How could I ever do such a thing to someone I love?”
“Because you’re a fucking monster, Michael. You’re a monster who has conned everyone into believing you’re some sort of saint who simply has bad luck at the worst possible moments. You get some perverse pleasure out of sending people to their death, or the knowledge that you had enough power over them to do so.”
Smith was smiling but Emmy couldn’t see it. Michael knew then that his initial impression of the man had been right.
“Miss Lanstrom, end it now.”
Even as tears poured from her eyes, Emily aimed the gun with her steady hands; hands Michael had taught to shoot dispassionately and unaffected by the emotions of their owner. She smiled, knowing that things were going to be different from here on.
“Goodbye, Michael.”
The trigger started to move and Michael stared at it, feeling as if the entirety of the universe had broken free of its restriction called reality. There was simply no other way to explain how a trusted friend could be so moved by false information. Jamie had started to move towards him to act as a shield and Smith’s gun and head began to turn to follow her, the safety lever in the trigger starting to move through its deadly motion.
Emmy’s hand swung right and the gun fired, driving the five-point-seven millimeter projectile from the barrel and through the side of Smith’s head as he turned. The bullet lanced through his skull, hardly tumbling at all in-between layers of bone, but he was dead almost instantly anyway. His turn made him fall forward and land on his face with a sort of scrunching thump as he hit the stone bridge.
Jamie was stunned by the event, enough so that she withheld her attack on Emmy even without Michael’s suggestion. As they all cooled off from the moment, Emily shook slightly and started to wipe her eyes to dry the tears that she had struggled so hard to bring forth.
“What just happened?” Jamie’s words were an echo of Michael’s thoughts.
Emmy smiled victoriously and holstered her gun, pausing only to remove the suppressor. “Just a bit of house cleaning.” Her hand pulled a cell phone from her pocket and she dialed a number, one Michael vaguely remembered from the tones. It seemed like it hadn’t had a chance to ring before she spoke. 
“Mission accomplished, sir.” There was a confused face a she listened to the words from the other end and Michael looked to Jamie to find a similar look as she focused to hear what he could not. “Yes, sir.”
She flipped the phone around and hit the speaker option as she had evidently been ordered.
“Thank you, Mister Christiansen, for your hard work in this matter.”
The voice of George Rathbone seemed to grate on his nerves with the events of the evening being so serious. If Orson Wells had been alive, Michael would have killed him just for sounding like the man.
“What matter?”
“This little mole hunt I’ve been working on for some time. You see, it’s so easy to move the pieces into play, but the hardest part is keeping the opponent in the dark long enough to make them trap themselves. Incidentally, Smith there was the man who was about to kill you on behalf of Ian Amherst, but then you already had guessed that, am I right?”
“I was a little slow on the connection, but I knew someone from the CIA was on his payroll. How did you find him?”
“When he asked for the information on the Rybnik incident, I knew that he could not have any use for it but to hunt you down. You’re the only one left involved in it, except of course for the person who gave the termination order for Gunter. Or the person who replaced that man.”
“The former DDO.”
“Correct. You see, he was getting the information and altering it enough to use on Miss Lanstrom, and the only reason he would do that was to use her against you. You would trust her so far that she could get in close and finish what he could never do alone.”
Emmy was still smiling, Michael saw, but there was more than that to her. She felt victorious above what one would feel for killing a traitor.
“And I’m guessing that you told Emmy something about him that set her up for the acting job she had to give both of us.”
“Smith was the German station chief back then, Michael, and he’s the one who arranged for my sister to fall into Ex-Co’s sights.”
“What?”
“He was just starting to work for Amherst at the time and needed to prove himself. Smith was in debt then, something we keep a track on with our NOCs to gauge whether they can be turned, as you well know. He was slick about it, but he turned over Lanstrom’s sister and sealed his deal with Amherst, and no one was the wiser.”
“Damn. If I had known that, I would have popped his ass in Rome, right on the embassy doorstep.”
“Yes, well, I was hoping to keep things quieter than that. The best I could come up with was this overly elaborate plan to set him up with your agency’s information, which he would naturally sell to Amherst. It was remarkably convenient that it meshed with his task to eliminate you for Amherst.” The smugness from the other end of the line was sickening.
“I’m surprised he didn’t see the trap in it.” He kicked the body at his feet.
“I was watching him, Christiansen. It’s not as if it was a coincidence. I knew that Amherst would use him to get to you, and so set my plan in motion even before Amherst thought of using him.”
Michael had to admit that, assuming Rathbone was being truthful, that it was one of the most well orchestrated smoke-outs he had ever seen. 
“There is no place in my ranks for people less-loyal to their country than to others, which is why I am cleaning house. This is why, Emily Lanstrom, that I hereby dismiss you from the Central Intelligence Agency, and advise you that you are now persona non grata, as is Katherine Bates, your unfortunately- named friend in Paris. I trust the money in the case will be an adequate severance package for the hard work and sacrifice the two of you have put in.”
Emmy was stunned, though Michael knew that the full reality of her new status would hit her later, just as it did with him. Rathbone was targeting people Michael had worked closely with, and were there not so many dead among them, George might consider the total experience he was giving up to be less-affordable. He had obviously been hard at planning for this moment for some time, and that meant that a piece of the puzzle that Michael had not yet been able to find had been hidden by someone unexpected.
“Tell me about Tanya, George.”
Emmy looked at Michael, suddenly realizing what she too had missed.
“Tatyana Sokolov...” There was a sigh from the other end, as if he were tired of thinking about the subject. “Her loyalty was only to you, Michael. I don’t know where she found some of that information that she passed along, but I know where it was not. She was a traitor, and was dealt with using the same, err... enthusiasm, as my predecessor had.”
“You son of a bitch! You set her up!”
“She sold herself out, Christiansen. When she chose you over her country’s security, she sealed her fate. She was aware of how close we were on her heels, and that is why she went to Rome. Your lack of protection is a large part of how Amherst got to her, but if you’re wondering who it was that allowed her location to be known to Smith, and through him Amherst, then yes, it was me.”
Michael turned beet-red, his jaw clenching hard to restrain the fierce sea of hatred that was roiling inside him. He snatched the phone from Emmy’s hand and held it close to his mouth; speaking quietly with anger in such a way that his words could not fail to get across.
“Listen to me you ferret-faced little cock-sucker... You had better make sure your insurance is paid up, because when I get my hands on you, I am going to- to....“
His hatred had started to boil over as he thought it through, so much so that he could not speak. For someone who was normally as cool and in-control as Michael, a loss of words spoke more about what was going to happen than the actual words could ever convey.
“Please... You can’t even get into the country now, Christiansen.  Do you really think that you could ever get to me? I’m the Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA! Which reminds me, I have a meeting to attend to shortly with the President, so I’m afraid that I have to be going. Don’t worry about the body- my clean-up crew is going to take care of it. It wouldn’t do for Miss Lanstrom to be suspected of murder on my account.”
“I’m going to bury you, right after I’m done burying Amherst. Make sure you’re watching for me.”
“Don’t make things any more difficult for yourself, Christiansen. You have your life, you have money, and you have your freedom. Given my options, you should be thankful that I’ve let things end as they are. Don’t make yourself any more of a pain than you are. Just... walk away. That is the end of it, Christiansen.”
The call was cut and Michael was left holding the silent phone, still trying to understand just how far into the depths the conspiracy had run. Emily took the phone from him and moved off to the side of the bridge, dialing a number quickly and then speaking in hushed tones.
“Michael.” Jamie’s voice was a calm, if concerned, breeze in the hot, sweltering atmosphere of his mind. “Michael, we have company. I think we should move off somewhere else.”
He looked to where her eyes were locked, on the five people who had appeared from the pitch-black woods that Jamie had been looking into earlier. They were dressed in suits, all the same, and they wore sunglasses to complete the disguise, even in the darkness.
“That is so cliché.” Emmy let the men approach and then handed her gun over to one, having cleared it first. She took Michael by the arm and steered him to the path that led to the hotel, resisting the urge to look back until they were out of sight. “I called Katherine and warned her. She’s packing and will be in Munich tomorrow morning. I’m supposed to meet her there.”
“You told her the news?”
“I told her that we are compromised and that we can’t rely on the Agency to protect us. We had a plan for this and she’ll be just fine. In the meantime, I have to get that money laundered and get to the rendezvous, so that means I can’t hang around to talk. I have to go now.”
He understood and would not hold her up but for one last question.
“Emmy?”
“Yes?”
“How did you manage that act? How were you able to keep your sanity through all of that, even as one of your sister’s killers was right next to you, waiting to die?”
Emmy smiled again and wiped a genuine tear from her eye, but then returned to the strengthened woman he had seen of late. “I’ve asked myself that a few times already, and all I can come up with is that the man deserved to die. Someone had to step up and take control, and I was the best person for it. Tanya taught me that. No one can stand in the way of true justice as long as someone is willing to devote themselves to it.”
She took a few steps away and waved at Michael and Jamie, giving an unspoken hope for their success in their own mission. She then turned and jogged up the hill, disappearing from sight and leaving the two to their questions. 
“What does it all mean?” Jamie’s question was her soul speaking out against the injustices and confusing judgments of Fate that seemed to surround them constantly, as if to swallow them whole should they ever give up treading water in their fight to stay alive.
Somehow Michael knew exactly what she was speaking of, and fortunately had an answer of sorts.
“It means that we can’t stop. We’re a truck without brakes heading headlong into the side of a building, and hoping to hell we hit the door instead of the wall.”
“That’s what I thought.”

The car was where they left it that morning, packed and ready to move. There was a bouquet of flowers on the hood, however, and it was clear that they were meant for her. The set of a dozen roses had a single red among the yellows, eliciting a questioning look from Jamie as she climbed into the car. 
“There’s no card.”
“I’d imagine it’s from Nicholas.” Michael started the car and drove onto the road, relaxing as the car sped into the night, farther and farther away from CIA gremlins.
“But why the single red?”
“Well, I’m not sure it translates directly into anything, but usually a mix of red and yellow represents a friendship that the sender is hoping will become something more.”
“So a single red among yellow...”
“It means you can talk to him as a friend if you ever need to, and that he’ll always carry a special place for you in his heart. Or something.”
“I see.”
In the glow of the dashboard lights Michael could see her warm smile. Even if she had put the young man off he was still hopeful, and perhaps she was too. Their lives were so entwined in the whimsical lines of Fate that they could not know how things could turn out for certain, but there was certainly every reason for them both to make it through the tests ahead alive.