Secondhand Sorcery

Pekka Hovinen was thirty-three years old, 188 centimeters tall, and an unabashed chatterer—a clumsy, gangling, fair-haired giant, prone to fits of sentimentality and rhetorical overreach. His wife Therese Bechard was twenty-nine and sarcastic, a petite, dark-haired beauty, and ferociously perfectionist in all that she did. Their associate Aare Kriisa was thirty-eight, a retired boxer who looked the part, and taciturn to a fault; it was a struggle to get more than a handful of words out of him on any subject. The three of them had in common a flawless command of the Russian language, and little else.

It would have made an interesting story, Pekka always thought, to tell how a Finn, a Frenchwoman, and an Estonian came to be working together in the southwest corner of Russia. It was a peculiar series of accidents that led three independent intelligence operations to fuse into one multinational effort for the sake of efficiency. Sadly, he could never tell the tale—but then, as Therese often reminded him, it was not as if he lacked for things to say anyway.

None of their neighbors knew them by their real names, which they were careful to avoid using even when they were alone; he was Pyotr, married to Teresa, whose brother Arkady often came over to visit. They were the sole local representatives of a middling architectural firm which had been entirely tied up, for the past five years, in trying to cut through the red tape to erect an office building in Volgograd.

Pyotr had learned to exposit endlessly on their latest bureaucratic woes to anyone who would ask or even listen, with the result that none of the people he interacted with would express the slightest curiosity about their work any longer. Why did this beleaguered firm bother with the expense of maintaining a tiny satellite office in Krasnodar, where they had no current clients? It was a fascinating and complex question whose full answer nobody had yet had the patience to sit through. Whatever it was, nobody could doubt that Pyotr was a hard worker who spent most of his day sending and answering messages by mail, phone, or computer.

He was not, however, such a masochist as to routinely come into the office on weekends. The 9th of March found him at home with Teresa, watching television and sending out innocuous text messages to various friends about town; Pyotr Maximovich Ignatyev was a generous fellow who could be relied upon to do the odd favor for a friend, or even an acquaintance. He received a call from one such friend in the early afternoon, letting him know of an interesting development in the Crimea. Pyotr thanked the man, hung up, looked into it, and immediately called his brother-in-law and asked him to look into property prices near Sennoi.

“I was doing that already,” Arkady told him.

“Ah. You have heard, then?”

“I have.”

“Has your research turned up anything promising yet?”

“Difficult to say.” Pyotr, not Arkady, was the public face of the firm for good reason.

“I see. Perhaps I should come over, brother.”

“If you like.” And he hung up.

Ten minutes later Pyotr and Teresa were knocking on the door of Arkady’s apartment. This was only a courtesy—they had their own key, and he would be too busy to come to the door. The little flat was a mess of loose papers, some blueprints and schematics but mostly old letters and forms, held down by equally old books used as paperweights. As the designated recluse of their trio, Arkady was the natural guardian of their few sensitive written materials; anybody who felt like digging through the mess for hours would make a number of sensational discoveries, buried inside one drawer of one ancient and overstuffed file cabinet.

Arkady himself was ensconced in a torn armchair, his eyes closed, breathing slowly, his cat curled up in his lap. His old Makarov, which usually lived in another filing cabinet, was stuffed in between the seat cushion and the arm of the chair. Pyotr made sure his wife had closed and locked the door behind her before he said, “Are they active?”

“Not anymore. Half an hour ago.” He sounded as though he were talking in his sleep. Pyotr tiptoed past the clutter to look at the map on his ottoman, marked with conjectural scribbles. Arkady was gifted, but not the best, and this was truly extreme range for his, or anyone else’s, talents.

Pyotr had already gained more information than this on their way here: the bridge was destroyed, the defending force defeated, the hostage released. Annoyingly, the defending emissor—Crimea’s, not their own Lamprey’s—seemed to have survived, though he was badly injured, along with one or more of the Marshall children. Pyotr left Arkady to sink further into trance, and joined his wife by the window.

“Nobody seems to have followed us,” she said, watching the pedestrian traffic and their parked car.

“Why would they, my sweet? We have worked so very hard to be so very boring. Do you doubt my skill at discouraging interest?”

“I have not survived this long by refusing to doubt.” She had one hand inside her coat, where Pyotr knew she had her little pipe hidden. She was right, of course. Everything was a calculated risk. Bringing the pipe meant they were prepared for more contingencies, but more vulnerable to a random search of their persons. Not using it here left them vulnerable to electronic bugs, but did not expose them to clairvoyance.

These were small risks, very small—but a tiny risk, taken a thousand times, was no longer so small. Personally, Pyotr found it all invigorating, but he knew he was strange. He also knew he would start pacing again if he did not find something to do with his energy, so he called Mr. Ivan Leskov, the construction supervisor for the project in Volgograd.

He answered on the first ring. “I am aware of the situation. What do you need?”

“I was wondering if the permits had come in for Mr. Mishin’s group.”

A pause. “I agree that Mishin’s group would be very helpful. I am less sure that they are worth the cost, for this particular job.”

“We have them on retainer, Vanya. We might as well use them.”

“Our budget is limited for their kind of work.”

“But the results?”

“Are probably worth it,” Leskov admitted with a sigh. “Very well. Make it happen.” And he hung up.

Teresa looked up from her window with a smile. “We’re using the Scions, then?”

“Of course. It’s a perfect opportunity. Arkady, still nothing?” A grunt, and a shake of the head. “Keep at it.” He went into the kitchen for the next call, so as not to distract him further. Conversations with “Mishin” tended to run long, and this one was no exception; he didn’t get off the phone for twenty minutes. By the time he got back, Arkady was leaning over the map, drawing fresh circles in a new color.

“Don’t get excited,” Teresa cautioned. “It’s just the Lamprey.”

“Damn. I thought we had her tied up in Sochi?” Using ‘we’ loosely, of course; the recent disturbances were the work of their colleagues in Georgia, whom none of them had personally met.

“We did. This was major enough to bring her back up.”

“I don’t suppose we got a good look at her this time?”

“Not that I’ve heard, no. We don’t have what we’d need in place to kill her, anyway.”

“Perkele.” They’d actually uncovered her identity, back in 2011, and put a good-sized bullet in her. It had bought them four months sans interference while she went away for treatment, plastic surgery, and a fresh identity. Now all they could say was that the oprichnik for this region was almost certainly still a woman. Unless the surgery had been very radical indeed …

“And the Scions?” Teresa prompted.

“Are ready to intercept. But they need somewhere to look, first.” He waved his hand over the map. “And they can’t act anywhere where that damned slippery eel might be.” Now he really was pacing. “Could we draw her away?”

“She would know it was a diversion, and we cannot cause more damage than the children could, in her absence.”

“True. But that is no reason not to try.” He got his phone back out, and looked down at the map again, at a scribble to their southeast. “What was she doing bringing the Lamprey out in … Maykop? Are they there? How could they have slipped past us so soon?”

“It’s at least three hundred kilometers from the bridge. Do they have an airplane?”

“Of course not.” Pyotr laughed. “Thank you for grounding my wild fancies, dear heart.”

“You are welcome,” she said, perusing the map. “I am sure Vanya Leskov is handling it.”

“In fact,” Pyotr mused, “It might have been something he ordered that brought her out in Maykop. I should have thought of that myself.”

“Yes, you should have.”

“Very well. Where would they be headed, then? Novorossiysk is the closest large city, easiest to get lost in—but do they want a large city? It is also obvious, and will have the most military presence. But will they think of that? It’s a difficult question. Their most immediate need will be safety, a place to hide, but one of them is injured—how badly, we don’t know. Maybe dead. Will they rank the life of one comrade over the safety of the rest? Quite possibly. They are young, and have known each other some time. And the only one who can be injured permanently is their healer, whose survival would be paramount for tactical reasons anyway …”

Teresa let him babble; she knew it was only his way of thinking things through. Arkady too remained silent in his trance while Pyotr bounced around his apartment, raising and discarding plans and possibilities. If they had not both learned to ignore or at least tolerate his habits, their cadre would have collapsed years ago; anyway, they were just as glad that the affliction of authority had fallen on him, not them.

He came to a decision in less than five minutes. “The Lamprey will not risk anything audacious under the circumstances. They are not contained, or able to be contained, as they were on that bridge, so a battle could cause mass casualties. She will rely on her security apparatus to smoke them out, then strike surgically. That will be our point of attack.”

“So, diversion?” Teresa was pale, but calm. That was one virtue of doing all your hardest thinking out loud: it gave everyone time to accept your conclusion before you had presented it.

“Yes, my love. The Scions are better equipped to find them than we are, unless they become active. But they cannot search effectively under the noses of the military and the police. These children have far more power than anything we, or any other asset in this region, can offer. The logic is clear. Do you contest it?”

For once, she did not. In fact, she did not say anything at all. There was no need. “Then I will drive, this time. Arkady—Aare—you are in charge. Let us know if you make contact.” He slapped his notional brother-in-law on the shoulder, checked the Makarov to be sure he had not forgotten to load it again, and left with his wife.

They embraced, too briefly, in the stairwell leading down to the street. It was all the time they could spare. They had another drive to retrieve her larger and more dangerous pipe, with its cache of ectoplasm, from its hiding place. Pyotr drove there one-handed, so that he could work his phone with the other.

His first call was to Ivan Leskov, who confirmed his plan and agreed that now was a fine time for their little architectural business to divest itself of all Russian assets. Indeed he was already hauling luggage out to his car when Pyotr called, so that he was panting through the whole conversation. Pyotr was sure Vanya would have a very interesting report to give to his superiors in Brussels.

“Our Vanya is a fine fellow, don’t you think?” he said as he ended the call.

“Is now the time for such talk?”

“Probably not,” he agreed, and pulled up his next contact. The next conversation was equally to the point, and again Pyotr found the colleague he was contacting already in motion. They truly were blessed with intelligent and perceptive allies, who could see what needed to be done and act with all speed. But then, he himself had not been chosen for particular cleverness or insight. Really, Pyotr was just a very talented trader of favors. “Maykop was Alyosha’s work,” he reported to his wife when he was done.

“I am not surprised.”

“Four simultaneous car-bombs, and they shot up city hall and a courthouse. Excellent initiative. The Lamprey had no choice but to intervene.”

“Alyosha had four cars ready that quickly?”

“I gather his boys were planning something anyway. This only moved the timetable forward. Unfortunately, they will be unable to help us further. Alyosha himself may be dead.”

“A shame.”

“Yes.” But he was already making his next call.

By the time Teresa had the tools she needed, Pyotr had a fairly solid plan and timetable in place. It did not deviate much from established doctrine; the first target would be the one requiring the most protracted and subtle action on their part. The rest of the list, which they might not get to, would be brief and brazen.

Unfortunately they did not have any really reliable allies in place near the Bebrovich Security Complex; he had to settle for a minor street gang who happened to have friends inside. Teresa sent fifteen or so of her little pets into the building to blast open walls and burn out critical systems, and the hoodlums did their best to help the delighted escapees find their way to shelter. Of course a few guards were killed in the process, but nothing to touch Alyosha’s accomplishment, which irked him. But then, as Teresa reminded him, they were only getting started.

He forced himself to drive slowly and calmly to the next target, the local commandant’s headquarters. They had no allies there, and did not need any; Teresa simply spent the entire contents of her pipe to send a good-sized black dog over the wall and through the window as they drove by. They heard the first shots before they got a block away, and many more followed, but Teresa assured him that the dog was quite bulletproof and could gnaw through concrete if it pleased. Pyotr gallantly refilled the pipe—she had taught him how, long ago, and he was gratified to find he still remembered—while she set it rampaging through the building. At least a score of men fell before the survivors went running out into the street in a panic. The dog howled in its victory, making a noise like an air-raid siren, then spent the last of its strength in a terrific explosion. A good bit of work, but it took some time.

He was less circumspect with his driving to the airbase, whose fuel storage facilities they detonated en passant, and then the city’s largest police station, where a three-meter-long flying worm of fire took down the load-bearing walls in less than a minute. The power plant went the same way, but quicker, as heaps of stored coal went up in flames. And they still had a fair store of ectoplasm remaining. The true difficulty would come when that ran out.

This was only Krasnodar, the local capital. Similar mischief would be playing out on a different scale across the region. Pyotr knew his wife was not the only piper in the region; Vanya Leskov had rescued at least a couple of disgruntled players from the purge five years ago. He wondered how they felt about coming out of hiding to save emissors like the men who had sought to destroy them. Or were they being used at all? If Leskov was keeping a couple of cards in reserve, Pyotr would not blame him. Something had to be left to help the children; this was the chance of a generation, and would not come again.

Pyotr already knew roughly how his part would end, Maykop being so close to Krasnodar. They were en route to the army’s local motor pool when he got the call from Arkady, letting him know a sizable and familiar halo had appeared within city limits. The call cut out halfway through, and Pyotr was unable to call him back. This was useful; it gave him a fairly clear idea where the Lamprey’s halo was, far better than his friend’s laconic description. As for Arkady, he could take care of himself. They had no way to recognize his face, that Pyotr knew of.

There was no further need or use for the kind of sporadic destruction they had been employing thus far. He pulled over into a grocery store’s parking lot to give his wife a long, passionate kiss. “Are you ready, my dainty little nightingale?”

“Always.” Even now, she had an eye on the window, watching to see if they were watched. “We might take her down for good, this time.”

They almost certainly would not. But he did not say so; she knew it better than he did. Despite her long claims to the contrary, he thought many things he did not say. He tried to put more of them into another kiss. Three years of marriage—the real marriage, behind the front—were really not enough. He knew that if he thought on it longer he would get teary-eyed, and she would scold him for a ninny. So he did not.

“She’s at the east end of the city, near the reservoir. What do you think?”

Teresa shook her head. “The Lamprey will have her own espers. I can lure her. I’m sure she still has a grudge. But I don’t know where.”

The reservoir … “We could take out the dam and drown her?”

She rolled her eyes. “This is not an action movie, you goose.”

“True enough. But I have no other ideas. I suppose we shall have to improvise.”

“Why should now be any different?”

“It has worked so well,” he agreed. “Stay with me, love of my life. Straight through to the other side.” He reached out to take her hand, and together they put the car back in gear.