'There are some secrets which do not permit themselves
to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the
hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously
in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion
of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries
which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.'
- Edgar Allan Poe, 'A Man of the Crowd.'
Chapter One: Which Will Not Suffer Themselves
Floodlights illuminated what was left of the Factory, casting parts of it into bright white relief and throwing the rest into shadow so deep that it rivaled even the darkest places in the surrounding forest. It turned the SOLOMON agents combing the rubble into black-clad ghosts, their faces bleached of color and detail by the near-blinding light. Voices carried across the wreckage, but the words were indistinct, lost through some peculiarity of space or acoustics.
Doujima watched as the agents swept over the wreckage in organized, grid-like patterns and sent up a short but sincere prayer that no one would ask her to contribute to the effort. She was much more comfortable sitting on the sidelines, her back pressed against the crumbled remains of a concrete wall. She had done enough for tonight, she decided. More than enough, after getting shot at and nearly having a building fall on her head.
In fact, she was thinking about demanding hazard pay.
Miho stood a few feet away, half leaning against another large section of concrete as a SOLOMON medic gave her a cursory examination. She bore the man's questions with remarkable patience, but there was a strange, distant look in the her eyes, and she seemed to be focusing on something about two inches above his right shoulder rather than on his face. At first, Doujima had simply chalked it up to shock at the night's events and her own near brush with death. Out of character for the usually composed Hunter, certainly, but if there was anyone who was entitled to a breakdown at this point, it was Karasuma. The longer she watched, however, the more she began to wonder. Karasuma didn't seem traumatized, only distracted. And when Doujima had finally asked her what had happened in the Factory, the brunette had simply shaken her head, a silent but irrefutable refusal to answer.
To someone who uncovered secrets for a living, it was maddening. Something had obviously happened, but if Karasuma's stubborn silence was any indication, no one was ever going to hear about it.
Or perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps her coworker had been caught in the head by a falling piece of granite, and was simply concussed.
Remarkably cheered by the thought, Doujima turned her attention back to the slightly eerie scene before her, the stumbling hunt through the rubble. It didn't look as though they had found anything, although that would undoubtedly change as the first layer of debris was cleared away and the remains of Zaizen's labs were revealed. She was startled and not a little dismayed to see one of the searchers break away from the group and start towards her, moving with a strange, ambling grace over the broken ground. She tucked her chin into her chest and curled a little closer to the wall, wondering if she could actually refuse to get up and help.
A pair of heavy black boots entered her field of vision, and she pretended to be contemplating the front of her stolen jumpsuit for a moment longer before she looked up at the man before her.
He should have been completely unremarkable, with an unkempt thatch of sandy-colored hair and a broad, homely face that looked sunburned even in under the floodlights' glare. Average, the sort of person that your eyes just skipped over in a crowd. Then she met his gaze, and reconsidered her original assessment. His eyes were too shrewd, too calculating for him to maintain that commonplace illusion. There was fierce intelligence there, and a force of personality that almost made him attractive.
"Worm?"
The short question made her pause, and reconsider her refusal to move. Instead, she practically bounced to her feet and took a step forward to meet him. "Charlie! Finally I meet the voice on the phone." She eyed him critically. "You're cuter than my last contact with SOLOMON."
She thought she saw his lips twitch. "Marco swears that you caused most of his gray hairs. He swears about you in a lot of other ways, too."
Her muttered comment of "pussy" was probably too soft for the other spy to hear, but he chuckled all the same. He turned serious quickly after that, the lightning-fast shift in moods that usually indicated a spy, an actor, or one of the emotionally unsound. "Someone wants to speak with you. Follow me."
Doujima wrinkled her nose at him, and he arched a brow in response. "Please," he added, and his tone of voice bordered on sarcasm.
That was fine. She was used to sarcasm. She worked for the STN-J, after all. She stood straighter and clicked her heels together, a pale ghost of the mock-salute she had once offered Amon. Amon and Robin... She glanced over her shoulder at Karasuma again, then shook her head. They were dead. It would be better if she believed that. Then she wouldn't be lying when that was what she told her superiors at SOLOMON.
"I seem to be done here. Am I going to get called back to Venice soon?" she asked, as he led her away from Karasuma and the medic. They skirted the edge of the Factory, walking through the shadows between the lights and the forest.
Her contact was silent, and for a moment she thought that he wouldn't respond. Then he shrugged. "Damned if I know. You know the Spaniard: one closed-mouthed bastard. He's been hinting that he might keep you here a while longer; I think that this whole business with Zaizen caught his interest. Even though it seems to be over, there might be some digging left to do."
The Spaniard. SOLOMON's shadowy Head of Intelligence, who chose to make his home amongst Venice's twisting canals, rather than at the more traditional Roman headquarters. The misnomer wasn't necessary; she knew his name, and chances were good that Charlie did too. But even after all this time, when the glamour of the job should have been long gone, there was a certain thrill to it. Code names and hidden secrets and that little rush of adrenaline when you told a particularly good lie...
Sometimes she suspected that SOLOMON intelligence was made up entirely of overgrown children, playing a large and very elaborate game of spy. She glanced sideways at Charlie, but didn't try to read his expression. It would have been useless; whatever emotion was shown there was doubtless a lie, or at least not the whole truth.
"Occupational hazard," she muttered, and he cast her a swift, startled look.
"What, you mean his not telling us what's going on? Yeah, I suppose it is," he said, obviously assuming that she had been responding to his earlier comment.
Doujima didn't get a chance to correct him, for they had arrived at their destination. The little hill seemed to have been designated as the center of operations for the night, a barely organized mass of parked vehicles and motion as people hurried about their business. A steady flow of SOLOMON agents came and went from the Factory site, most of them looking dusty and exhausted even though the night's work had just barely begun.
"Who was it you said wanted to see me, again?" she asked, with feigned innocence.
The look that Charlie gave her over his shoulder was one of amusement. "I didn't." She shrugged at his succinct response. He could hardly blame a girl for trying.
"Father Juliano."
At first, she thought that Charlie's simple statement was the answer to her question. Then she realized that her guide had come to a stop, and that the man in question was in fact standing before them. She stifled the nervous titter that tried to force its way out of her throat; Father Juliano was a very imposing man, and having him suddenly loom up out of the shadows was definitely disconcerting. The fact that he was one of the most powerful men in SOLOMON did not make him any less intimidating.
"Thank you, Charles," he said gravely, and the other spy shot her a sideways glance before he bobbed his head in a nod and hurried away. She frowned at his retreating back, but soon had more important things to worry about as the full weight of Juliano's regard descended upon her.
"Yurika Doujima. You were our spy inside the STN-J, correct?" he asked, but continued without waiting for a response. His next words were unexpected. "Your parents send their regards."
She didn't even try to hide her disbelief, one eyebrow jerking up towards her hairline of its own accord. "And here I thought they were too busy plotting to take over the world," she quipped.
"Or at the very least, take over SOLOMON," he replied, his voice blank of even the slightest inflection. "Your father is a very ambitious man."
"If it were so, it was a grievous fault," Doujima murmured, and this time she saw one of his brows rise, above the rim of his dark glasses. "I don't share in my father's ambitions," she added hastily. "I'm perfectly happy living and dying as the village idiot."
"The village idiot, who quotes Shakespeare."
She tried to look down her nose at him, which was not an easy feat when he was towering a good foot above her. "Rich kids get private tutors. You wanted to ask me about something?" A small part of her brain that was removed from the conversation anxiously reminded her that this was one of the STN's top Hunter trainers, not Chief Kosaka, and that she couldn't mouth off to him with the same impunity. She liked to call that little corner of her brain her common sense, and ignored it with the ease of long practice.
He stared at her for a long moment, before nodding stiffly. "We have the blueprints that you sent to us of the Factory. We need you to go over them and tell us how accurate they are."
She strained to remember what she had sent them, and shook her head slowly. "Not very. Most of what Zaizen had built isn't even shown. Michael would know more about that than I do."
"Mr. Lee," the priest murmured, and nodded. "I have already spoken to him and your other coworker – along with another man whose connection to the STN-J I have yet to determine. However, I will ask again." He hesitated, and she sensed that he was on the brink of asking something else.
"Do you know what happened to Robin Sena? None of the men were able to tell me." Father Juliano paused, and she could practically see the wheels in his head turning as he wondered how much he actually had to tell her. "I was her guardian, for a time."
The question triggered a memory. "I remember. Amon said that you were the one who ordered her hunt."
"I was wrong."
For just a moment, she thought that she saw regret on his face. It made her want to tell him the truth, or at least the truth of what she suspected: that nothing as paltry as a collapsed building would kill the craft-user. She stopped herself before the words could escape her lips. If SOLOMON was going to believe that Robin was dead, then all of SOLOMON was going to have to believe that Robin was dead.
It was starting to feel like every time she opened her mouth, a lie came out. She was suddenly reminded that there were times when this whole spy business wasn't thrilling or exciting. In fact, there were times when it stank, like when you found yourself betraying your friends... Or when you ended up being the bearer evil tidings. Possibly false evil tidings, at that.
There was no helping it. She did what she had to do.
"I'm sorry, Father. She was caught in the collapse. Amon as well."
Another flash of barely-there emotion crossed his stern, patriarchal features. He bowed his head for a moment, as if in prayer or thought, then nodded. "Thank you. That will be all."
Awkwardly, Doujima removed herself from his presence. She drifted to the base of the hill, another place caught between the brilliant lights illuminating the Factory and the cool shadows of the woods. Once again her attention was caught by the slow, faltering dance of the agents who were searching the ruin.
A dance. That seemed fitting. It was a dance, and they were all dancers, pirouetting helplessly to the tune that SOLOMON played.
The thought startled her a little. It smacked of bitterness, and doubts that hadn't existed before she had been assigned to the STN-J. That was another disadvantage to being a spy. If you asked too many questions, you started to realize that the answers were not the ones that you had come to expect. Especially when it came to SOLOMON.
"Crisis of faith," Doujima muttered, then snorted. Dark and serious thoughts were brushed away simply because she did not want to confront them. She had told Juliano the truth; she was perfectly happy being the village idiot. She did not need nor want to examine the deep and possibly life-altering ethical questions, with all the strings and complications that came with them.
Perhaps that was what made her a good spy.
"Penny for them?"
She turned to look behind her, and although they were far enough away from the lights for her to have trouble making out his face, there was no mistaking the fluffy white mass of Nagira's coat.
"What?"
"A penny for your thoughts?"
She felt something in her relax at his easy tone, evil tidings and ethical questions washed away by amusement. "Hey, those were some heavy thoughts. I think they're worth more than that."
"Not according to...," he started to say, but stopped when he saw her expression and realized that he was about to get one of her erstwhile teammates into a whole mess of trouble. "Or not."
"That's what I thought."
Nagira chuckled softly, and she felt an answering smile on her lips. "I'm glad that you made it out, little lady."
She glanced at him as he came up to stand alongside her. "You know that Robin and Amon..."
"Are alive and well, and probably miles away by now? Why yes, I do." She could hear the humor in his voice, and didn't bother to contradict him. He leaned closer and lowered his voice, as if he was about to disclose a carefully guarded secret. "I know my little brother. It'd take more to stop him than a few tons of sheetrock being dropped onto his head."
"Of course it would," she found herself agreeing, "there's nothing in there to damage."
The sally drew another laugh out of him, and she felt the last of the tension that came from dealing with flying bullets, snarky spies and imposing priests simply dissolve. This geezer is pretty cool, she had said earlier. Now she was being forced to revise that opinion slightly. Something about Nagira's demeanor just acted like tonic on the nerves, making it impossible to be sad or dour.
Or at the very least, he seemed to be having that effect on her. Years of his company certainly hadn't improved Amon's disposition any.
She shook her hair back over her shoulders, and shivered a little as the cold nighttime air brushed the suddenly bare skin of her neck. She angled her body so that she was facing him, and pushed her lower lip out in a pout. "I don't suppose you'd lend a lady your coat?"
He grinned at her, a flash of white teeth in the shadows. "Not a chance. Do you want to go somewhere to get out of the cold?"
She dropped the pout, and tried to leer instead, although she had the feeling that it didn't come across quite like it was supposed to. "Are you propositioning me?" she asked, and the teasing tone somehow sounded more flirtatious than she had intended.
"Sure. Why not?" he replied, after a momentary pause that probably had more to do with her pitiful attempt at a leer than the question itself. He gestured up the road, where a mass of flashing blue and white lights indicated that Tokyo's finest had arrived in force, and didn't intend on leaving anytime soon. "I'm sure one of your Chief's buddies will give us a ride out. I'll buy you a drink somewhere."
Doujima considered, tilting her head back to look at the hill with its mass of parked cars and trucks, even a helicopter tucked to one side. She probably wasn't supposed to leave yet, but it wouldn't be the first time she had gone missing right when there was work to be done. Or possibly because there was work to be done. She smirked a little at the thought; leaving would keep her from being drafted to help with the search effort.
"Okay."
Her job here was finished. The secret of the Orbo had been discovered, Zaizen had been stopped, and Miho had been rescued. SOLOMON could take over, searching for hidden mysteries amongst the ruins.
As for her, she would have to be content to let the Factory keep the rest of its secrets, buried beneath mortar and stone.
Alfonso de Cardona y Alemán, the man otherwise known only as 'The Spaniard', did not look like the most skilled Head of Intelligence that SOLOMON-International had ever employed. Most of his spies used a harmless exterior to mislead others, but he turned the deception into an art form. A slightly built man to begin with, he was dwarfed by the massive desk that he sat at and the overstuffed leather chair behind it. His skin was darkly tanned, and his face was a network of fine lines, especially near the mouth where years of wrapping his lips around a cigar had given them a tight, pinched look. White hair was neatly slicked back, and what looked to be a watch fob hung out of the front pocket of a finely made suit that was at least two sizes too big for him.
He actually reminded Charlie a little of his Grandpa Dresden, a man who had always smelled of tobacco smoke and shoe polish, and who had told his ancient war stories so often that even a curious young boy had eventually gotten bored of them. That was the difference, of course. Alfonso rarely said anything, much less repeated what he did say, and if he was more than old enough to have grandchildren of his own... Well, no one had ever dared suggest retirement to him.
He didn't stand when Charlie entered the room, but he did scoot to the edge of his cushion and lean out across the desk. Shrewd dark eyes glanced over the cardboard box in Charlie's arms, then moved on to his face. "I see that you're back from your sojourn in Japan. What have you brought me, Charlie my boy?"
"I recovered what I could from Zaizen's Factory," he said, and placed the box on the edge of the desk, "Some of it's badly damaged, but maybe you can do something with it." He paused, and ran a hand through his disheveled blond hair, mussing it even worse. "I didn't report to the officials in Japan on any of it, as you instructed. May I ask why, sir?" It was a cautious question, and one he didn't really expect an answer to.
Alfonso glanced at him and laughed, a rusty cackle of a sound. "Oh, nothing as sinister as all that, my boy." He settled back in his chair, his expression turning thoughtful. "You will find, as time goes on, that spying for SOLOMON requires a certain amount of spying on SOLOMON as well. The men in Rome are not inclined to share power or information, so unless you intend to become yet another one of their pawns..."
"I understand, sir."
Another cackling little laugh. "I thought you would. That's why you'll be running this operation someday, mark my words." He grinned, smoke-yellowed teeth showing for just a moment. "Besides, I want to know what was going on there. I have some lively curiosity, for such a dead cat."
"Sir?"
"Don't worry about it. Any news?"
"Nothing that you don't already know. The Factory has been destroyed, and Administrator Zaizen is dead. Two members of the STN-J have also been reported as dead, one of them the craft-user who was declared a witch and hunted a while back."
"Robin Sena," Alfonso mused, and Charlie didn't bother to wonder how the man knew her name. "Yes, she was declared rogue soon after being assigned to the STN-J. You sound doubtful, though. Who told you about the deaths?"
"Our worm. Miss Doujima."
He looked surprised, although Charlie couldn't tell if Alfonso actually felt the emotion or if it was just there for his benefit. "Do you have any reason to doubt her truthfulness?" There was a certain amount of irony in the question; a good spy never really trusted anyone's truthfulness, especially that of another spy. Charlie understood the reason behind the query, though. Alfonso had always had a certain fondness for the ditzy blonde.
"I was there for a few days, and she seems very close to the members of the STN-J," he stated carefully. "I believe that she would lie to protect them, if she didn't feel it interfered with her duties to you. And there were no bodies recovered."
"I see."
"The Factory is immense, sir," Charlie hurried to add, "so it's possible that they simply haven't been found yet. Or... This Robin Sena, she was supposed to have been a fire witch, and we did find evidence of burning. Isn't it possibly that she lost control when she realized the Factory was coming down, and incinerated herself and those around her? Strong emotion does tend to bring out the Craft in people."
"I believe I would know about that even better than you, Charlie-boy. Wouldn't you say?" Alfonso asked, somewhat dryly, and Charlie belatedly remembered that the Head of Intelligence did not like to be reminded of his own Craft powers. The old man sighed, and shook his head. "Yes. That's all possible. Or it's possible that you're correct, and Miss Doujima has indeed been keeping things from us." He smiled, ruefully. "After all, I taught her well."
Charlie remained tactfully silent, and watched as Alfonso's expression turned thoughtful. Finally, he seemed to come to some conclusion, and shook his head.
"No. I'm not concerned by this. Leave it alone."
"As you like," Charlie replied, and turned to leave the room.
"Leave it alone... for now."
Disclaimer: Witch Hunter Robin is not mine. Nope. Leave it as that.
Notes: Many thanks to WiccanMethuselah (auntiemom, for any of you Harry's folk) for beta reading. Stay tuned for the next chapter, in which our brave heroes receive mysterious letters from mysterious people and take an unexpected trip.
Edit: Uncredited Shakespeare quote (Doujima's) from Julius Ceasar, uncredited paraphrase (Alfonso's) from The Lion in Winter.