Secondhand Sorcery

The video opened on an older man in a generic military uniform at a podium, on a stage in front of a line of other men in military uniform, all in front of a flag nobody to date had identified. Presumably designed a couple of weeks back by Russian spooks, like the outfits. The men all looked more or less like they could be Turkish, or something Near Eastern anyway. The old man nodded at the camera, and started talking. He at least had a decent speaking voice, nice and deep.

“We are Bihevra,” the subtitles read. Thoughtfully added by whoever put the thing on the internet. “We are many, we are strong, and we are silent. Your friends, your neighbors, your family, all are Bihevra, living quietly among you for many years, until the day came to break our silence. Now that day has dawned.”

A series of pictures started playing across the screen in rapid succession—a mixture of old manuscript illustrations, paintings, drawings, black-and-white and color photographs. All of them looked unpleasant. The narration wasn’t pretty either, though Keisha didn’t get half of what it alluded to. Something about the Ottoman Empire and Kemal Ataturk.

“And they played this across the whole country?” Ethan asked, as the video described a forced deportation incident from 1963.

“On the state-run TV and radio stations,” Hamp confirmed. “Then wrecked the transmitter and left, and uploaded it to the internet everywhere they could. What’s left of the government tried to censor it about twenty-six hours too late.”

“It’s almost like they had bigger problems,” Keisha said, waving her hand at the window. Downtown Ankara was a wreck, with a body count in the tens of thousands so far—disproportionately government workers. All the hotels were crammed with the newly homeless and foreign aid workers, when they hadn’t been converted into makeshift hospitals; Hamp had pulled strings she didn’t know existed to get them a pair of offices to flop in.

The President, Prime Minister, Chiefs of Staff, and basically most of last week’s executive branch were missing, presumed dead. The acting authorities were all military officers who’d been in Istanbul when all this went down, and were now making decisions they hadn’t been trained to make based on information they didn’t have.

Parliament was mostly intact but understandably a little out of sorts. Many MPs had resigned on the spot. The remainder were busy with phone calls from their terrified constituents, when those constituents weren’t themselves busy forming militias and stringing each other up on suspicion of being “Behivra” agents. That seemed to be mostly a thing in the east end of the country, though.

Dr. Gus shut off the video. The whole thing was almost ten minutes long, and they’d seen it once before anyway. “It is extremely vexing to reflect how predictable this ought to have been.”

“Retrospect,” Hamp said. “You always assume the people running countries are more rational than they really are. No matter how many times they prove you wrong.”

“What’s irrational about it?” Ethan demanded. “Can’t nobody ask them to give Fatih back to a country, or a government, that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a dick move and then some, but that doesn’t make it stupid or crazy.”

“Even if we could have predicted them trying this at this exact time,” Keisha said, “there’s not much we could have done about it. We developed Stillwater to block this kind of decapitation strike, and we know that it works—or it did once, anyway. But we can afford to shield DC with a massive project like that; the Turks can’t. It’s not just a matter of money. They don’t have the clairvoyants to spare.”

“Even assuming that we shared the technology with them,” Hampton added. “Which we wouldn’t. Security risk. This crazy world we live in.”

On a whim, Keisha took the laptop from Dr. Gus and pulled up the map again. A long, wide strip of Ankara southeast of the former Palace site had been leveled by Shum-Shum, after Yuri ran out of firewood where he was. Sadly, he’d somehow avoided bringing any buildings down on his own head in the process. He’d had lots of practice. If only she’d shot him in the head instead of the hand …

South-central Ankara had another big bloc marked “damaged,” in the sense of the familiar casing a lot of it in glass on her way out. Whole buildings, covered top to bottom. Most of the occupants suffocated waiting for somebody to come rescue them. A smaller dot near the center of the city, where Mister Higgins destroyed half of their version of the FBI before apparently getting bored or neutralized, details unclear. Another dot, a little further north, was “Anıtkabir,” tomb of the renowned Ataturk, where Kizil Khan had terrorized the tourists with no clear objective other than spreading fear. Minimal casualties, for once, mostly caused in the panicked stampede after the familiar cleared out.

Last site, east of the tomb, around their current location: the ministries district surrounding the Parliament building, where Rhadamanthus had gone on a very thorough two-hour rampage, methodically slaughtering whole federal departments, only stopping when a Turk familiar belatedly arrived in to challenge him. The emissor had taken that long just to get through the nightmarish traffic and decide where to attack; the whole center of the city had spent most of an hour as a mess of ambivalent field effects where multiple halos overlapped.

Almost nobody left alive had the necessary knowledge to run the country; foreign advisors and minor officials were collaborating on patching together essential services. Various generals had divided the rest of Turkey between them so they could attempt to administer martial law. There was talk of moving the capital to Istanbul so the Coalition siege camp could double as a quick response force. Nobody was clear on what the constitutional authority was for anything.

And all four of them were sleeping on cots, in a pair of offices whose former occupants had been killed two days ago. At least there were no bloodstains.

“As I see it,” she spoke up, “we have two burning questions to deal with here.”

“Only two?” Hamp said.

“Is the first one, ‘where the hell is their followup at?’” Ethan added.

“It is,” Keisha said. “First attack comes late Saturday afternoon. All of Sunday, not a peep. Now it’s Monday, we’ve got aid workers from five continents flying into their perfectly functional airport, just like we did last night, to start undoing their damage … it’s not like they need to resupply, or have any other conventional military concerns. They should be pressing their advantage.”

Hamp put up a hand. Like her, he was sitting on a cot. Ethan had parked his butt on the previous occupant’s desk, his feet in the office chair, while Dr. Gus had barely moved from the recliner where he’d spent the night. “Are they worried about using them too much, putting them under too much strain? They are still kids.”

Ethan laughed. “You think Ivan wants to be gentle and considerate?”

“No, but I don’t think he wants them snapping and doing something crazy. I mean, Jesus, I got nervous when mine started driving around that age.”

“That would be a valid concern,” said Dr. Gus, “but I am not sure it is pertinent to current Russian considerations. They are under considerable timetable pressure; that much is evident from the way they have put the children to use within a week of acquiring them. Any sensible commander would allow a considerable time for indoctrination if he could. In all likelihood, the Kremlin views the five children as a totally expendable asset, acquired by a windfall and unlikely to remain useful for long.”

“So they shoot ‘til the gun’s dry, and toss it if it jams.”

“God, Ethan, could you possibly pick a more tasteless metaphor?”

Ethan looked like he was thinking about it; they were all spared his ingenuity by Hamp’s phone ringing. He looked at the screen, then went into the other office to answer. “And what would be your second ‘burning question?’” Dr. Gus prompted, as soon as the door closed behind him.

“Nadia. She’s not accounted for anywhere. They had five targets, but there’s no sign she was used against any; they hit the state TV station with an oprichnik. We know she was alive and with the group at least through Moldova. Hamp’s buddies confirmed pickup in Tighina. What are they doing with her now?”

“She’s the youngest, right?” Ethan frowned. “Might be they’re holding her back in reserve, or don’t think she’s steady enough. It sounds like she’s the one who wasted Marshall; I wouldn’t send her off to a fight as soon as I got her, if I was them.”

“I do not think this a matter of immediate concern,” Dr. Gus added. “It might be they simply did not require her, and the other four would be unreliable at best in their performance if she were somehow hurt.”

“Yeah … maybe.”

The office door popped open behind her, and Hamp stuck his head in, still holding the phone up to his ear. “Move it, people, they’re playing our song.”

The roads around the Ministries district were partially clear now, but getting a taxi was out of the question. The city’s surviving cabs had all been pressed into service ferrying VIPs. It was pure luck that the hospital was within walking distance, across the highway and a quarter-mile up the street. That still meant a lengthy delay, as half their team walked with canes, and the man who’d called Hamp—a slightly portly hospital executive with bags under his eyes—was pacing back and forth in the lobby when they got there, hissing rapid-fire instructions into his phone. He cut the conversation short when he saw them.

“You are the Americans,” he said, not even bothering to introduce himself. “With the Numinate, yes? Follow me.”

He walked fast, talked faster, and for a man who helped run a hospital was surprisingly indifferent to the limitations of the elderly and injured. Keisha left Ethan to wrangle the other two while she hustled in his wake. “We received her very late Saturday night, mixed in with the admissions from the General Directorate of Security. The paramedics left her in the emergency department and went to get their next patient. We were sufficiently busy that we took her identification at face value and did not look it up.”

“What kind of condition is she in?” she asked as he pushed a button to summon an elevator.

“Multiple broken bones along the right side of her body, including a cracked skull. Lacerations of the liver and other internal organs, large right-sided pneumothorax, aftermath of hypovolemic shock, probable traumatic brain injury. She is more or less stable, for the moment. Given her age and condition, eventual recovery seems probable but quality of life is uncertain. Did you bring security?”

“It doesn’t sound like she’d be able to—“

“Security for her,” he clarified, as the doors opened and they stepped in. Keisha caught a glimpse of Ethan, Hamp, and Dr. Gus turning the last corner as the doors closed. “Please understand: she has lived this long because we thought she was a foreign student. I have kept it quiet, contained it as best I could. I would not confirm her identity without the means to protect her on hand; our security staff are stretched thin as it is.”

“I’m armed,” Keisha said. The man looked skeptical, but only grunted in reply. He was telling the truth about security, though; they came to the relevant door and found it “guarded” by an exhausted-looking teenage girl in scrubs. She hurried off at a nod from the man, who then motioned Keisha inside.

She could barely see the girl in the bed, under all the casts, bandages, and equipment. The tubes in her mouth had been sloppily taped in place, covering much of her lower face, and what was visible was badly bruised. Half her scalp was shaved and plastered with (leaky) dressings. Keisha stepped closer, tugged the ventilator tubing gently aside so she could get a closer look. The executive hovered behind her, wringing his hands.

It was hard to say for sure whether this living corpse was the same girl she’d last seen laughing and chatting with her adopted sister two weeks earlier. “You say she came in with patients from the Security building?” Mister Higgins had been the attacker there. How many people her age, sex, and ethnicity could have been in the area?

“So I am told. Two hours ago we were informed that a person matching her rough description was wanted by … the authorities,” he concluded vaguely. Like he didn’t know who the hell was an authority anymore. “Two people, rather, but the other was not known to be significantly injured. It took some time to acquire your contact information.”

“That’s fine,” she said, pulling back an eyelid, trying to visualize the human under the carnage. Maybe … “Who was the other person, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“A girl around the same age, but taller, and with straight hair.”

Keisha did her best not to react visibly. “I see. And what happened to her?”

“Witnesses report an altercation between the two girls, which became violent. This one lost the fight, sustaining the injuries you see; the other fled the scene shortly after.”

Oh, hell. “Has this child said anything since she came in?”

“No. She was unconscious on arrival, and we have kept her sedated since.”

“Fine.” She turned to look him in the eye. “How long would it take you to wake her up?”

“I am not a doctor, miss. I do not know if it would be safe—that is, if her condition permits it. I am not certain it would be safe for us, either. Is she … the person you suspect she is, then?”

“I’m reasonably sure that this is Fatima Alvarez-Marshall,” she said. “Sure enough that I want her awake for questioning as soon as possible. So get me a doctor.”

“I will see what can be done,” the man said stiffly. “But if this young lady is in fact an emissor, as a matter of liability, of safety—“

He recoiled as Keisha took a pistol out of her jacket. “If she manages to call her familiar—assuming she can in her condition, and he can fit in this cramped room without squishing her flat—I promise you I will put a bullet between her eyes. Now get a damn doctor already, or a nurse, or whoever you need to contact to get that crap out of her mouth and get her talking. Every minute we lose is another minute of planning time for the bastards who just killed your fellow citizens, you understand? Move it!”

He gave her a petulant look, but turned to go, nearly running into Ethan, Hamp and Dr. Gus as he left.

It took another hour just to get a doctor to weigh in, four more after that to get everything lined up. Enough time for a small army of Turkish officials to show up and start arguing, and for Dr. Gus and the Colonel to summon an opposing force of Americans in uniform to bark back. She and Ethan stayed in the room, guns out, the whole time, while hospital staff came and went, adjusting machines and squirting syringes into IV lines.

At 1430—not quite two full days after she murdered more than a hundred people—Fatima’s eyes fluttered open, and swiveled to focus on the pistol barrel pointing at her nose.

“Good afternoon, Fatima,” Keisha said, loud, slow, and clear. “Can you understand me? Nod if you understand. Good! This is how it’s going to go, Fatima: in just a second, we’re going to pull that breathing tube out of your mouth, and the two of us are going to have a talk. Before you get any ideas, you should know that you’re very sick right now, Fatima. You can’t walk, and these machines are keeping you alive. If you try to call Mister Higgins to this room, you will die. Do you understand that?”

The girl blinked several times; her eyes moved sluggishly around the room, taking in Ethan, Dr. Gus, and Hampton, the hospital staff squeezed in around and between them, and the international collection of suits spilling out into the hallway. At last she nodded.

“Okay. Let’s get started, then.”