Chapter 4 - The Introduction
"According to Black, it all started when they came back from a trip to Nigeria almost a year ago," Gray began. "The girls - Temperance Eliana and Constance Eliana - and their four close friends go to different countries during their holidays," his eyes darted towards the rear-view mirror to gauge their reaction before going back to focus on the road again. "Apparently they even spend those holidays doing the weirdest things."
"Like what?" Joe asked.
"Going to all these private museums, visiting private collectors, visiting unorthodox churches, hanging out with tribal leaders and shamans, spending time in obscure libraries and participating in native rituals," Gray listed, sounding distracted as he made a left turn at a busy intersection. Joe looked at Frank who seemed to be thinking the same thing. Although it wasn't what most kids of the same age did, it didn't sound that bad. In his experience, rich kids with unusual names had peculiar tendencies.
"They were obsessively researching anything and everything to do with death, the afterlife and reincarnation." the spy added, noticing their scepticism.
Oh, okay, that's a bit out there, Joe admitted in the privacy of his own mind. After their recent entanglement with the supernatural, he felt that he really shouldn't discount what Gray was telling them as nothing but a quirky habit.
"They apparently made friends with this small, hidden Nigerian tribe called, Mmuo-Eze," Gray continued. "Meaning 'king of ghosts' or something in that line. They live deep in the jungle, away from other tribes and towns, very self-sustained, and extremely primitive. They speak a derivative of Igbo as their primary language. The Saunders kids and their friends got invited to one of those private yearly celebrations of the tribe through a few Nigerian students they knew from their previous college,"
"I was under the impression that such tribes are notorious for keeping their religious beliefs, customs and lifestyles private, especially from Westerners," Frank wondered.
"Oh, they are, believe me," Gray agreed. "Black said they had a hard time getting permission for the girls' security to accompany them. He said he had to lock them up and give them an ultimatum, either security goes with them or nobody goes. Eventually, they came to a compromise. Three agents along with the six kids got the chance to visit the tribe. Black said they had to hike over two miles in the dense forest to get to the ceremony site."
Hiking in an unknown and unfamiliar wilderness with six teenagers didn't sound like a wise move a head of security should have approved at all, especially when two of them were the daughters of one of the most powerful political figures. Joe wondered why Edwin Black hadn't tried to scrap that trip altogether.
"Must have been a security nightmare," he said mildly.
"And then some," Gray agreed. "Black said he wanted to cancel the trip but the mayor butted in, saying the two Nigerian kids were the sons of the Nigerian president's close advisors. He was ordered to treat it like a diplomatic visit," he explained, correctly reading Joe's expression. "Afterwards, when they got back, Black said it was one of the craziest things he had witnessed in his life. He was a veteran in the army and was in the active theatre of two wars. It takes a lot to shake that man–"
"What did he see?" Frank asked, intrigued.
Gray was silent for a moment, visibly debating with himself about how much to share with them. Then he sighed and shook his head, making up his mind. "According to him, it was some kind of a first harvest thanksgiving celebration. He said they had fruits, vegetables and grains stacked in a circle around a clearing with a stone altar in the middle. The natives were all naked, men and women both, wearing only red, white and black body paint, beads and large feathers in their hair. He said they were howling and beating handmade drums the entire time they had to stand around the altar and watch the… performance."
Sounds like a rave, Joe thought, amused. A tribal version.
"Now, I don't know what exactly happened, and neither does Black or his team," Gray stressed. "It had apparently been the middle of the night with only a quarter moon and a few lanterns to light up the place, and there was some local liquor and a type of weed being passed around among the participants…"
"Now you are prevaricating, Gray," Frank said with a grin when the spy trailed off. "Tell us what happened."
"Apparently they brought in a voodoo doll at some point. A small, child-sized thing made of hay and sticks, like an effigy," Gray picked up his story again. "Painted like the rest of them. The village chieftain or the shaman then laid the doll over the altar and slit its head off with a dagger. Black said it happened so fast nobody knew how to react, except for the rest of the villagers, of course, who had started to howl at the top of their lungs at that point," he continued. "He swore that he saw the little ball of tied-up hay rolled to the edge of the circle with offerings and caught fire because it knocked off one of the lanterns on the floor."
"What's so strange about a ball of dried-up hay catching fire?" Joe frowned, puzzled.
"Nothing," Gray said. "But what happened to the rest of the doll was another matter. Black didn't know how it happened, he said somebody could have snuck the kid in while they were distracted by the howling and the doll head, but when they looked back, the stone altar was on fire, and when it died down after a few seconds, there was a kid, a newborn, screaming and crying, on top of the altar where the rest of the doll went up in flames."
They were all quiet after that, all lost in their thoughts. To Joe, what the spy just described sounded like a b-rated horror movie plot, a bad one at that. He realised then that the whole point of the account was not that the incident was a hoax or not, but the reaction of the mayor's daughters.
"So what, did the Saunders girls and their friends believe that it was real?" he burst out, flabbergasted. "Not some kind of an elaborate performance of their religious beliefs of some kind?"
"Apparently they took it as the gospel," Gray sighed, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe the entire thing either. "That's what Black said. He mentioned the same thing in his field reports as well. The Saunders' group and the two friends were adamant that the baby was a gift from their deities and that it happens once every twenty years or so. The tribe is blessed by a miracle child in exchange for the first offerings of their harvest. The child becomes the chief Shaman of the tribe when he grows up. He gets tutored by the previous miracle child who is an adult by then,"
"Did they have this strange fascination of theirs before they witnessed this or was this the incident that made them believers?" Frank asked.
"Black said the kids were a bit different even before the trip," Gray replied. "But the obsession began after the incident. They brought back a truckload of voodoo dolls, incense, dried bones and juju ritual scrolls with them, gifted to them by the tribal chief himself. After that, every time they went back abroad, they went to countries such as Egypt, Greek, and even India, where the beliefs of the afterlife and reincarnation are more popular than here,"
"Okay. So they sound like a bunch of, well…"
"Looneys?" Joe added helpfully when Frank hunted around for a diplomatic description.
"Yeah, that," Frank admitted. "But I still don't get how you and your agency got entangled with some kids who just have a bizarre hobby."
"Because bizarre hobbies are all well and good until they cross the line to feed their insane curiosities."
"What did they do?"
"Nothing we have found solid proof of yet," Gray said. But his tone implied that he had strong suspicions that the Saunders twins were up to something. "While Black ran around trying to keep a bunch of weird kids alive, I was back in the headquarters, supervising the analysis of a massive SIGINT dump of a few new terrorist groups,"
"My team was combing over chat room transcripts, social media posts and blogs that came up on our system with higher percentages of suspicious terrorist activities. There were talks of sanitisation, religious rebirth and purging of humankind, the usual drivel but with certain names of people who died under suspicious circumstances and places that were attacked, burned down or bombed,"
"Any special religious sect or–"
"Not really," Gray replied. "There were political figures, celebrities, and even kids among the list of the dead these groups were talking about, but none of them connected to each other by nationality, religion, age, common interests or anything of any kind. The places that got destroyed included highways, a church, a museum and a bank among other things, but nothing to give us any solid connection or actionable information."
"What caught our attention was the handle, 'The Broker,'" he continued. "This handle has popped up in many servers and while we're not sure if it's an individual or a group, they act as a middleman to bring sellers and buyers together… sellers and buyers of classified information, weapons, bombs…"
"A black market dealer for terrorists," Frank muttered.
"Yes. The Broker was mentioned in several places in the info dump we were investigating," Gray said. "What triggered an alarm was the fact that we found a communication between The Broker and the Saunders twins,"
Joe exchanged a glance with his brother. This case was getting more and more complicated as they listened.
"All their correspondence is monitored due to security reasons, and they aren't aware of it," Gray explained. "The Broker invited them to a chat room and we managed to get into the server using the gate he left open for the girls. They either found the breach or got paranoid because the chat group deleted itself after a few days, but we had a piece of their conversation that raised red flags all over the place."
"What was the deal?"
"Temperance and Constance were asking The Broker to acquire them a coin of Hekate and a Staff of Cailleach," Gray said, stumbling over the name just like Frank did when he first came across it. This time the gaze they exchanged was full of trepidation. If the girls had any knowledge about the Guardian of the World of the Spirits, it stood to reason that they were on the right path to whatever they were planning with all the death-related research. And, according to what Gray already told them, they were probably experts on the subject matter by now.
"Our specialists are combing the databases to find more information about these items, so far no luck," Gray continued, oblivious to the fresh dread Joe and Frank shared. "But we believe it has something to do with this bizarre hobby of theirs, but what's concerning was what The Broker was asking for as payment,"
"What were they asking?" Joe managed to ask, not wanting to let the spy in on their own knowledge just yet.
"They were asking the girls' assistance to access Mr Saunders' private work accounts," Gray revealed. "Before they could get into details, the chat room got scrubbed."
"But you're not sure how far they went with the deal." Frank guessed. Judging by the sour look on Gray's face, Joe figured Frank had nailed it on the head.
"Unfortunately," Gray mumbled. "They may even have changed their handle. We couldn't find any more suspicious emails or any further correspondence matching this initial conversation, but it's a loose end we really can't afford to let go without investigating further."
'So that's your stake on this," Frank said, starting to put everything together. "You need us to find out if this group is involved in selling state secrets to buy information or relics pertaining to the afterlife. The dean wants us to find out if they're dealing drugs, weapons or other banned substances, so he could kick them out–"
"Essentially, yes," Gray nodded.
"Out of curiosity, what happened to Agent Black?" Joe wanted to know.
"Edwin had to go because he had a family emergency: his wife suffered a stroke," Gray said quietly. "Since I've spoken to him about the overlaps in our cases and had an idea about this group, I took over," then he flashed a grin. "My connection to the two of you came in handy too."
"I bet." Joe grinned back.
"I honestly didn't give much attention to this obsession of the Saunders' girls, even after we caught them trying to negotiate with the suspected terrorist groups," Gray admitted. "I was under the impression that this was probably some kind of a delayed rebellion against their father…"
"What changed your mind?" Frank prompted when the spy went silent.
"I met them," Gray said, very softly, and Joe thought he saw the man shudder at the memory. "I'm telling you, Frank, Joe, I know you two are more than capable of taking care of yourselves, but please, be careful, especially around Temperance and Constance," he said, staring at them imploringly through the rear-view mirror. "We'll be keeping an eye on you all the time, but don't ever let your own guard down and watch your backs. There is something very unsettling about those girls."