Chapter 11: Stakes Determination

Date: Friday, 4th June 2010

Time: 8pm, Burrow

The carefree laughter of the children brightened the moods of their parents. Their humor was perpetuated with the rib-splitting antics of Fred and George. Adding to the normally present children of the Weasely Siblings and Draco, daughters of Zabini and Neville brought life to the gathering.

This dosage of light humor was a desperate need for the adults in the room that included Harry and Athena. After the Euphoria all of them experienced in the first week after Hermione and Athena's master plan implementation, it was soon replaced by despondency and impatience.

In the first week, their lead gave away all past information about Lucas and his band, a wonderful source of information for Athena, Hermione and Pansy that included thinking patterns, strategy and modus operandi. Neville assisted in psychological profiling even as Harry, Draco and Ron worked on passing this information in codes to the next generation. In the coding process, Zabini, Katie and Bill were the primary assisting members whereas Ginny and rest of the Weaselys prepped the children and selected the likely candidates. Aurey was the obvious choice but even he was not to have 100% information, in case he was captured. Teddy was another candidate followed by the daughters of Harry and Percy.

Hermione, Athena and Harry from 2nd week onwards looked at Dudley's inputs and tried to decode the information coming in from Cody Wilshere, disguising as his twin Jack Wilshere.

It was now almost 2 weeks and their combined intelligence could not decode a single bit of useful information about their targets. Harry suggested that Cody might be dead but Hermione shook her head. She had placed a charm in the microchip that would pass on the information of subject's death or any attempt to pull away the chip from the subject and fit it elsewhere. Cody was alive and well but they did not know where. It was too risky to activate GSM because that was a double edged sword. Her enemies could find her out via that process as well by tracking who was tracking the GSM.

After the children went off to sleep and they had the room swept for bugs, all of them gathered once again as a group.

Percy spoke up, "The situation is crystal clear. Lucas has deduced the fact that he has an impersonator. He is quiet in his dealings with Jack (Cody) or has completely stopped dealing with him because he has no faith in an impostor. He is just imprisoned till doom."

Others including Hermione were forced to agree with Percy because of overwhelming evidence backing him.

On 20th June deep into the night, Hermione was woken from her slumber by a desperate bit of communication from Cody's family. The Z*** team allowed her and Pansy instant access to a common park outside their safe house.

Malcom accompanied her to Cody's family. He specified the secret code with the Z*** leader and he allowed Hermione entry into the park. The sight she saw stopped her heart. A strong and healthy Jack looked on at a distance as his frail twin Cody hugged his family. Hermione looked at Pansy with growing confusion and Pansy's eyes mirrored hers.

Jack had a fit of hysterical laughter as he looked at them. He spoke up with a big smile, "Hermione, I laud your scientific skills and I am sure your additive potion would preserve my exact look including incurious tattoos upon Cody. However, you are dealing with my best friend and he is intelligent enough to deduce a real person from fake by even a minor thing such as an angle of toe movement. He is meticulous in observation and while I am sure that my memories (with Pansy's psychological profiling) have aided Cody to keep up an appearance of my personality as well, he is far more intelligent to deduce who is the real me and who is not."

Hermione nodded at Jack and looked at Cody, asking him for some type of account.

"I wish I could tell you more but it's simply this. This afternoon Lucas came over to my cell and told me, "We have kept up the play for long enough but it's time to show the cards. Go home Cody to your loved ones and enjoy your remaining time with them. Also inform Hermione that I will explain her and Company in appropriate time.""

Jack continued, "Hermione, now that the truth is out, I see no reason for me to continue being in the safe house. I agreed to it only for the sake of Cody's family. The deferred explanation from him is a way of giving me time to enjoy in the normal world before returning to lifelong torture or a painful death. I request to stay with you and Draco and enjoy first rate luxuries as a guest. When he does give you the explanation, which can be 3 days from now or 30 days, I know his first demand: my return. With the combined negotiating skills of You, Harry or Athena, this will not change."

Athena, Hermione, Harry and Co waited with bated breath for Lucas's communication. Lucas called them over to his guest castle in Devon on 25th June, 2 days before his announced first move.

Lucas had specifically asked both Cody and Jack to be present in the talks and his wishes were met by Hermione and Co. He met them all with a booming laughter that echoed across the fireplace he set for them. Once again he was speaking as a shadow. All of them were impressed by his Hosting grace earlier that evening that included a 200 course buffet, 15th Century Wine, cigars for men and perfumes for ladies.

"Welcome, all of you! Hermione and Athena, I bow before your intelligence, and with you stalwarts out there, you are providing me the first true challenge in a long time. But I must admit, you hurt me. I have been the gentleman and openly laid out the cards but you tricked me and sent me an impostor. Before saying anything else, why can't you play a fair game, Hermione and Athena?"

Hermione scoffed, "Oh please, Lucas! Quit acting hurt. Had you been so trusting, you would never have installed prime grade surveillance equipment in our halls."

Lucas gave a sheepish grin, "Perhaps we both are at a morally slippery ground. Anyway, you must be wondering why I invited you all to my castle."

Hermione nodded.

"It took me 10 hours to figure out that you were baiting Aurelian and that is a first from my end. With Jack's ribbing, it normally takes me less than 10 minutes. With him gone, I am losing the edge because of low or no intellectual challenge. Anyhow, when I realized that you baited Aurelian, I was wondering what other damages you did to my system. As my first test, I decided to confirm my very first suspicion that I had: I was talking to a wrong Jack. What had arisen a suspicion in me was how meekly he surrendered saying he hurt me already and did not wish to fight or hurt me anymore. The real Jack is hardly emotional and extremely vicious but at the same time my best loyal second in command. I expected a minimum loss of 7-10 wizards in the capture process but he put down his arms meekly. This is unlike his cold and steely demeanor. I was the one who cried when he pushed me out of a burning spell pathway and even now his body is covered with permanent scalding burns from a Rival. I called in Cody (I know that now, I suspected it then) and told him that he was a fake Jack.

This is a technique we use in investigation. Mentally unnerve the answerer with an unsettling fact and then lower his guard with small talk. Finally when he is confused, trap him with a seemingly trivial but vital question that he fails to answer correctly. Ron and Hermione, you must be aware of this strategy from your time in Law Enforcement (Both nodded). Anyway, I asked him if I had smiled on the 10th hour of 20th March night when he came clean. He answered wrongly and got caught.

I will share with you what happened in my dealings with Jack since that night because you need to understand the background and the logic behind my future demands this night. Besides being my 2nd in command and my best friend, his iron will and high intelligence made him the strategist for the entire organization. We shared a light hearted banter session each evening before we retire (We are both bachelors not because of any malice towards women-they have 60% representation in our senior leadership levels-but purely out of choice) but that evening he came to me with tear stained face. I immediately thought about Cody-I knew about his condition- and I asked him to spit out his poison.

"Lucas, it has something to do with Cody. He has no more than a year to live and I want to live my life for him. Unlike me, he is a good man. At his deathbed, I want him to feel proud of me. I want him to look at me and say that I am leaving my family in the care of a good man. At this moment, I can't even look at myself in the mirror, let alone expect him to say this. I want to go clean in 15 days' time, Lucas. At the same time I care too much about you. It would truly hurt me if I was sly and you heard about my intentions from some other wizard. I know that with my responsibilities, quitting is impossible and you will find ways to end my life through a bomb or any such device. That will be truly sad because I deserve a better death. So I will come in without my wand in 15 days and finish me with any spell to my chest. That will be a good death."

I absorbed his words and with difficulty I spoke to him, "Thank you, Jack. I admire your straight forward honesty. There are many ways to let you go without killing you but I firstly wish to know, why are you taking this step 15 days away and not today?"

Jack smiled, "The Vienna affair should take that long. This is my last assignment with you and possibly in my life. After today, I will not be involved in any new plan you may discuss with others because you know my intention. At the same time, I can't leave you in a limbo."

I asked him, "My second and final question is who? My Rivals or the Police?"

He continued smiling, "Neither, Lucas. The Police are fairly useless. I would not be wasting my valuable energy on them. Had they any sense, all of us should have been arrested by the Magical FBI after our debacle in Delaware. I had half expected out entire group to be in the coolers that dawn. If the world's best Magical Law Enforcement department could not catch us, I expect zilch from others of their kind. As for Rivals, they will use any information possible to kill you or permanently damage you. I can't allow that to happen. Your welfare means a lot to me."

Tears gagged my throat as I embraced him tightly and told him to come back to that very room in 15 days. He carried out his final mission with élan and our organization gained a financial corpus worth 700 trillion galleons, our largest acquisition in 120 years. It was a fitting farewell.

True to his word, he came in wandless and locked the door.

"All right Lucas, let us end this quickly."

He sat down opposite me and closed his eyes. His calm demeanor belied a man who believed he was about to die. It was as if he accepted his death and wanted to die in my hands.

"Open your eyes Jack. I am not going to kill you, not now and not ever. I appreciate your honesty and in these 15 days I have made alternate plans to continue my organization. However you still have not answered the essence of my last question-who hears out the cleansing of your soul if it's neither Police nor Rivals. What is his purpose?"

"Her purpose, Lucas. You have met her once but probably do not recollect much about her. She has sworn to permanently end all your activities without any physical or mental harm done to you because she wants to avenge your role in making Voldemort out of Tom Riddle. She relies totally on her intelligence, something which even you possess in abundance. It is a battle of pure wits and you both are on even ground on that front."

I recollected the reference and remembered Athena properly for the first time, including her fiery determination to stop me.

"How did you get her interested to hear you out?" I asked him curiously.

"I revealed her that your next long term target is Hermione Granger. With Harry Potter being her friend and she having intimate knowledge of Tom Riddle, Athena was very interested in stopping you for good."

I looked at him square in the eye and said, "Jack, you are free to go wherever you want. Five of my best people will be monitoring you all the time. You can't go pretty much anywhere on your own. Our organization is not like Mafia. People are free to come and go provided they maintain ethics and you have shown that in the highest measure."

Jack smiled, "After I walk out of this door, I can't have any more obligations to this group. I am pretty sure that I can escape all the henchmen you have, the bulk of whom I trained myself."

I laughed at his self-confidence and said, "It will be an insult to your intelligence if you don't escape 4 of my staff but the fifth is unknown to you."

Thus saying, he took my leave and promptly slipped past 4 of my commanders. The fifth person was nearly impossible to escape despite his (Jack) master strategy to remain an elusive person. Through that source I easily kept track on Jack and supposedly picked him up 3 days before the Quidditch International Friendly.

Back to the present, once I realized that the real Jack had escaped even my most intelligent tracker, I had newfound respect for Athena, Hermione and Co (in short you Guys). This was my first defeat. I also realized Hermione's strategy of drawing me out (using Aurey as bait) in the open so that we fight a face to face battle and not a proxy war. Keeping Cody captured was painful for me because I saw the tremendous valor needed to keep up the pretense of a healthy brother. It truly taxed him physically. I only let him be there to deduce what kinds of messages he sends out to you. I body searched him from head to toe till I found the device disguised as his teeth but said nothing to him. My intelligent assistant put in transcript the messages which he sent out to you. With that I felt I regained some lost ground. I was sadly disappointed.

With all my knowledge resources, I could not decode the messages. I tried everything from Greek scriptures to British Modern Cryptology- a 6000 year span and my team tried out all permutations, combinations and calculations. Nothing worked out. For the first time I realized that I was up against a stronger power of intelligence.

Hermione, I don't know if Athena poisoned you about me or not but the fact remains that I am a gracious man in defeat. I salute the intelligence of Athena, You and your entire group. Other things were minor setbacks and but this is my first true defeat."

Hermione replied, "Athena did not poison any of us. She only told us what she observed about you that one night in Liverpool: you are charming, pragmatic and extremely intelligent and you can manipulate all kinds of people that specially includes children."

Lucas nodded, "I need to clarify some things right now. Athena, I did not ask Tom to create a Horcrux, let alone make 7. I did make him hungry for power and seek a remedy for the injustice his mother and he himself faced. I did train him to be a master at defending dark arts but he turned the tables. His later acts became a source of shame to me. 3 years before you pleaded with Tom to end his evil ways, I asked him to tone down. He did that by training his vicious death eaters to do the evil deeds for him. Most of my folks come and go voluntarily. We do not force people to follow our ideology. Tom followed our ideology of power (that includes complete mastery of Magic), wealth and justice and created his own brand of bloodshed-I never advised him that, it was merely his inner nature. Pansy will certify that all my 780 other groups (Magic and Muggle) across the planet are engaged in unlawful but peaceful activities.

We believe that legalized wizard and witches have to make certain costly sacrifices both in their personal life and Natural Environment and we as a group aim to correct that. We are a powerful family band with a cause. Without my groups, most Muggle women folk would have remained confined to homes and kitchens. Without my bankers denying finance and my government sources regulating licenses, our already fragile Nature would have been further compromised with polluting industry. Muggle and Magical folks after all share the same earth. I am not condemning other institutions and commending mine. Our world just has space for all kinds of ideology. I apologize to all victims of Voldemort but that is not why we taught Tom. I said that day and I repeat it now: People choose to become what they are, aided by their peculiar circumstances and their own inner nature. People like us simply offer that choice."

Athena gave a kind smile, "We can debate on that forever but for the moment, I wonder what your next step is."

Lucas answered, "The next step is placing my own demands. Threats did not work with you so I would simply place a non-negotiable demand: return Jack."

Harry intervened, "What do you plan to do with him?"

Lucas gave a dark smile, "That is completely between Jack and myself. I would appreciate your neutrality here."

Athena interjected, "I do not believe that you can take him away so easily. He came to find me and we are responsible for his safety. What happens if we refuse to hand him over?"

A dark film masked the face of Lucas but Jack went into the middle ground facing both Lucas and Athena.

"I don't think we should escalate matters unnecessarily. Athena and Hermione, thank you for letting me live a King's life in these 2 months. After confessing my complete life, I have nothing left to share. My soul feels light now. Lucas, thank you for releasing my brother and giving me these many days. I am now prepared to go with you to face any action you decide to undertake-torture, death or my active return. I refuse to participate in any evil activity till my brother dies and after that IF I need to, I will once again be part of your board but only after informing Athena once a week about the scope of our major activities, barring the specifics. I will be your voice in your battle against Athena and would be speaking for both sides. You decided to bring out every major challenge out on the plate and I will carry on this role."

Lucas smiled, "I agree with you, Jack. Let us go now. Meet me at our drinking spot."

Jack replied, "Done Lucas."

Lucas looked at Athena and other Guests. "Now that we both know we are in this battle ground for a long haul, it is essential we determine the stakes involved. We can try sly tactics but in essence we share open challenges against each other. It is a question for our membership versus your ethics. It is also a matter of protecting Hermione, because she is our chief long term target. We want to voluntarily involve her in our fold and if she is there, all of you would follow. With my power extending over England Ministry of Magic, I would have global influence because unlike the Muggle World where USA and China dominate, we dominate the power play in the Magical Universe. I give you time to think over my words. See you day after tomorrow and goodnight. The Butlers will show you out of the Castle. By the way, if we become partners, our intelligence combines and the world benefits-Intelligence of Hermione, Athena, Myself and my core strategy team, bravery of Harry, diligence of Neville and Pansy, selflessness of Weaselys, commitment of Katie, Zabini, Draco and my gang. It would be a lie if you say you are not even considering this possibility for a fleeting while in your mind."

Saying this, Lucas faded away from the room. Jack embraced all of them and stayed back even as others made their way back home. Their chapter with Jack was to be a highly fruitful association with mutual benefits. At that point of time, all Jack had to do was go back to Lucas to embrace his fate and all Athena and Co could do was wait for the next move to materialize. Jack had solved his purpose, it was up to them to utilize his insights and information.

This war was a Russian roulette with fortunes swinging rapidly for both sides. The ball was now cast, it was time for everybody to sit back and enjoy the spectacles provided by the wheels of fortune.

A/N: Hi Readers, what do you think of my story thus far. We have proceeded from intoduction towards the Heart of the story. It is a high stakes game. Kindly review my story and provide your feedback.