Chapter 4: Whatever Happens (There Will Be No Turning Back)
"If you see the President, tell him from me that whatever happens there will be no turning back." - Ulysses S. Grant
Isabel wakes on the floor of the Shark with the sun in her eyes. There's a foul taste in her mouth - she's been heavily sedated rather than knocked unconscious by force - and her left wrist is handcuffed to one of the passenger seats. There is a single tranquilizer dart on the floor of the Shark directly below her right arm; all of it except the needle is matte black, and there's a tiny M etched on one side.
"Nataliya?" Isabel says. There's a crackle of speakers; NRR has heard her and is now listening. "What happened?"
"I don't know." NRR sounds like she hasn't slept in a few days. "The CCTV storage at the barn has been broken for months."
"It's your job to monitor the Shark," Isabel says. "Particularly when someone is about to use it."
"You didn't tell me you were planning to use it," NRR says, "and you've known about the security flaw since I first noticed it. No one has been willing to drive out to Pennsylvania to deal with it yet. The key to the magnetic cuffs is under the seat to your left. Would you like me to contact the New York base?"
"No need," Isabel says as she unlocks the cuffs. "I can see my car." It's right next to the dirt road she used to get here, and the tires aren't even slashed; the Madrigals must be getting careless.
"Sure," NRR says as Isabel climbs out of the Shark and walks towards her car.
.oOo.
When Irina and Beckmann walk through its glass doors, the New York base is nearly empty. The bankers have already planned their moves for the day and left to earn the branch even more money; the classes on surveillance and countersurveillance and poisons and lying aren't currently in question; the agents permanently stationed in New York are either on missions or on leave. There's a guard by the door - there's always a guard at the door between the facade and stronghold proper in the major bases - but he doesn't even glance up to check if they're authorized to enter (or, in the case of Beckmann, if she's allowed to go anywhere near the base at all).
Derrick Collins, on the other hand, starts sweating bullets the moment he looks up from his computer and recognizes Beckman. It's almost hilarious, really, how much Collins, who is well over six feet tall and built like Eisenhower Holt, fears the woman who taught him basic surveillance and evasion and is half his size. (Not that Irina blames him for that; Beckmann's teaching style was… eclectic enough she only ever taught one course, and Linda Hou still can't look at parrots without shuddering.)
"Why are you here?" Collins asks as he looks around to see if anyone else has spotted them.
"Hey, Derrick," Beckmann says. "You got promoted!" Collins scowls. "Or not, but at least you're not stuck in Alaska with a dodgy heater anymore. How's it been going? I haven't seen you in-"
"Seven years, five months, and eleven days," Collins says. "And yes, I did get promoted - I'm the regional coordinator now - but you're deflecting. Why are you here? There's still a kill-on-sight order for you."
"There's a potential security breach at the Shark's barn," Irina says before Beckmann can continute on a tangent. "There is a significant chance the Shark will be spotted by civilians." Collins groans.
"What kind of breach?" he asks.
"Likely minor," Irina says. "Isabel tried to use it last night," Collins grumbles something that sounds suspiciously like "of course she did" under his breath, "and was foiled."
"And you know this because..."
"Regional coordinator is a really big step up for you, isn't it?" Beckmann says. "Especially when you were a low-level grunt guarding a clue in the middle of nowhere last year." Collins looks like he's about to slam his head into his desk.
"Why did you strand Isabel in the middle of Pennsylvania?" Collins asks. His voice sounds strained.
"That's why we're here," Irina says. Collins takes a deep breath and gestures for her to go on.
"Isabel's not good," Irina says. "She's not a good person - though that's stating the obvious, no proper Lucian branch head is good - and she's not good for the branch as a whole. Just look at our casualty counts for the past ten, fifteen years; we've lost far too many people on missions that shouldn't have been high-risk." Collins nods; about half his cohort is dead by now, if Irina remembers correctly; only three of those deaths were listed as by natural causes on the death certificate, and one of those was Smith. "We think we can change that." Collins' eyebrows rise.
"You've never cared for her, not even when you were eighteen and a fresh recruit," Beckmann says very quickly. "You hated the way she talked to you and your parents; you thought it was super condescending, and it was. You hated how she assigned recruits without any consideration of their skills. You hated how she beefed up London and Moscow and New York at the expense of the smaller bases. And you haven't hated her any less since then, have you? Especially after Smith's death." Collins looks a bit like Beckmann just punched him in the gut; Irina's merely grateful that Beckmann went for Smith instead of Collins' nine-year-old neice. "I know you two were... very close before he died." Before he was executed, Beckmann doesn't say for once, and Irina wonders if Beckmann only gains tact when she's afraid of her words being used against her. (If so, Irina isn't sure why she's saying Smith and Collins were "very close" and not "very unsubtly sharing a one-bed room on base", which was true both when Beckmann knew Collins well and when Smith died.) "And then he said something - or nothing - or maybe he did something - or nothing - and you went on a mission for a few weeks, and by the time you got back, he was dead and gone and buried." Collins nods.
"It was nothing really - some grumbling about the latest version of the post-mission reflection form," Collins says. "They said it was natural causes, but the untreatable fever? the tremors? the rapid decline? That couldn't have been natural."
"It wasn't," Irina says, "and he wasn't alone in that." Irina leaves the names unsaid; most of the ones she knows wouldn't mean much to Collins, anyways. "Smith was one of our best agents for sublte information gathering; he could get things out of people with a few words that we couldn't get with weeks of interrogation. If he wasn't safe, who is? The only person Isabel cares about is herself. Maybe Vikram and her kids, too, but mostly herself. That puts us all in danger; under her leadership, we have the highest agent mortality rate of any of the branches at any point in the past two hundred years. That's not something I want. That's not something you want. And if we want to change it, we need to work together." Collins looks at them and nods once.
"I'll handle the US bases," Collins says. "They know me and trust my opinions; they'll probably follow us. You and Beckmann should start with the international bases. Word will get out quickly, but I might be able to slow Isabel down so we only need to worry about Vikram." Collins taps a few keys on his keyboard. "Why is Isabel wanted for arson and kidnapping?"
"Because she did both last night," Irina says.
"Of course she did," Collins mutters as he types something. "Well, the APB has her license plate number now, and the warrant is linked with her license, so she'll get arrested if she's pulled over. Where should we call first?"
.oOo.
Cora wakes up at ten a.m., still sleep-deprived but more or less functional, to find both her sisters chatting quietly in the living room. There's a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen - Leila had an early morning flight, and Camille believes that caffeine is the substance of the gods - and Cora pours herself a cup. It's only then that she notices Dan Cahill isn't on the couch where she left him.
"What happened to Dan?" Cora asks. Leila looks up at her and blinks a few times, confused. Camille doesn't react at all.
"Who's Dan?" Leila asks.
"Cora picked up a kid overnight," Camille says. "He was gone when I came back from picking you up. I assumed his parents came for him." Camille's tone is so perfectly nonchalant that Cora almost believes Camille had nothing to do with Dan disappearing. (Cora would bet she disabled the CCTV camera watching the street, too, so there's no evidence of her latest act of rebellion.) "Do we have any plans for today?"
"The Met's added a new gallery," Cora says, "from an artist I've never heard of. It's quaint, but quite stunning if you go for-" Cora's phone buzzes. She checks it to see a warning: Be careful. Ls in flux. "Or we could stay in and catch up on things. How's the pottery shop going, Leila? I haven't seen you in years."
The Met's new gallery can wait a few days; it's not even technically open yet, so there's no rush to see it before it leaves. Besides, whatever the Lucians are doing will probably die down quickly - their coups generally do - and Cora knows better than to get into the middle of a Lucian power struggle.
.oOo.
They do not contact the London base. One of Collins' younger agents suggests it after the leader of the Paris stronghold screams that they're all "traitors to the Lucian cause" - Irina thinks his (incredibly naive, even for a new agent) resoning is that nothing could be worse than that - but Beckmann and Irina don't even try. They might manage to turn Paris later - they've turned half a dozen other major bases in the past three hours, which is more than Irina had hoped for - but London is not a battle they could possibly win. Not with most of the other bases unsecured. Not with the numbers they have unequivocally on their side right now. Not with Vikram still there. Not practically in the Kabras' backyard.
The London base contacts them fifteen minutes after they call Cape Town and find it already in chaotic rebellion. By then, they've contacted all the other major strongholds, and Moscow and Santiago and Tokyo are fully on their side with a dozen others almost there. It's more than Irina had dared to hope for, but it's not enough. It was never going to be enough.
"Collins," Vikram Kabra says as Beckmann carefully avoids the camera's view; a known traitor is more likely to get them all killed than convince Vikram to step down. "And Spasky. I thought you were staying in St. Petersburg for the forseeable future."
"Isabel requested I come here for her attempt to intimidate the Trents," Irina says. "It didn't work, and Isabel went on the run."
"And that's how she ended up in a jailhouse in the middle of nowhere?" Vikram asks. It takes all of Irina's composure not to react. It's good news - Isabel is definitely more likely to kill her enemies and let their bodies act as a deterrent - but she's also the one people tend to dislike; Vikram may be able to hold onto power by himself if he's careful enough. "Conveniently out of the way of your little revolution."
"It's not that little, Vikram," Collins says. "If it was, you wouldn't be attempting to intimidate us into backing down; you'd just kill us for treason."
"What do you think you're doing?" Vikram snaps. "You must know you can't force us out with what you have right now."
"We couldn't force you and Isabel out," Irina says, "but we don't have to. Isabel's been arrested, and I think the charges will stick this time. And we both know that Isabel is the power player in your relationship."
"I guess we'll see about that." Vikram closes the connection.
"How would we kill Vikram without getting ourselves killed in the process?" Collins asks. "Linda's currently stationed in London, but I don't think Vikram will let her close enough after your threat."
"The London base's ventilation isn't secured," Beckmann says. "We could evacuate everyone else we could - or strike at night - and pump in gas. Or set it on fire; unless they've updated it since I left, the fireproofing there is so not up to code."
"We'll cross that bridge if we come to it," Irina says. "I'm more worried about what happens after he's gone." Vikram isn't going to put up his replacement, so they're moving towards a power vaccuum, and power vaccuums in the Lucian branch tend to get very messy very fast. They need a candidate - ideally only one candidate - going in, or things are not going to end well. "Collins, would you be willing to take another promotion?"
"I would," Collins says, "but I'm not sure people outside of the state will go for it. I'm not well-known outside of my home region."
"Ten years ago, neither was Isabel," Irina says.
Liked it? Hated it? Review and let me know!