Secondhand Sorcery

They had a better map now. Just last week they’d been using an old folding paper map from a gas station, with X’s and notes jotted here and there, sometimes scribbled over when rumors didn’t pan out. Now, courtesy of somebody at the DOD with a decent amount of free time and programming skill, they had a multilayered, color-coded, customizable app with different-colored marks for each person of interest, and tooltips that gave you date and time for every sighting. You could add and remove subjects, narrow and group by timeframe, click for aggregated details and analysis … it didn’t actually give them any new information, but it was slick. Keisha had to give them that.

Yuri was a big streak of red across the center of the Anatolian peninsula, mostly fading to pink now that his first rampage was ended. He’d gone to ground about a week ago, and sightings since were scattered, unconfirmed, but generally credible reports. There was no real pattern there, and the most recent was from yesterday, in the far southeast of the country. It was possible he’d moved into Syria. God only knew why.

Snowdrop’s purple marks were still concentrated around Ankara, turning pale with age like Yuri’s. Very quiet. She might have taken last Thursday’s bait, or not. Either way, not active in the capital, only unconfirmed and dubious sightings since. Keisha fiddled with the settings until all the purple went away. Wherever Snowdrop was, she was off the table for now.

Fatima and Ruslan, green and gold, mostly the latter. Their markings were almost all inferred; it was rare for anybody to see either’s familiar, and reports of feelings that happened to resemble a halo didn’t constitute proof of anything. Sudden, miraculous recovery, or inexplicable spontaneous death, were more solid leads, and after a little investigation got marked on the map. It seemed the two of them were headed more or less east as well, and a little south, passing through Kayseri and handing out life and death along the way. A lot of very sick or injured people were alive because of those two, and two soldiers and a cop had dropped dead on duty. Supposedly Kizil Khan preferred to hurt and heal in equal proportions, so there had to be a lot of corpses out there they’d overlooked. Easy to do, with the country in such a state. But they were on track to reach Bingöl by and by, so the ruse might be working.

That just left one color on the map. One ghostly blue dot in Ankara from late January, another almost a week later in the northeast of the country … and now two more. Their Bingöl fake, of course, from last Thursday. And then yesterday, Monday, Feb 4, around 1400: a solid blue dot at Patnos, north of Lake Van. Only about a hundred miles from Bingöl in a straight line. Supposedly, a Turkish detachment sent to recover the town had been ambushed and nearly wiped out. Reports consistently described halo effects, and a figure like a nude woman with long hair. If it was a fake, they’d done a better and more thorough job of it than Keisha’s team. But … why?

“Kinda hard to avoid the obvious conclusion, ain’t it?” said a voice in her ear.

She swung an arm up to backhand Ethan without looking; he dodged easily. “It’s obvious, sure. But it doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does. We already knew the Russians had her before. And she’s still helping them now.”

She sighed, and minimized the map. No explanation made sense. Was she still serving Russia? Then why had she turned against her sister, and vanished for a week before resurfacing at the other end of the country? It didn’t seem likely that she’d joined the Kurds, either; she didn’t even speak their language. Maybe the soldiers were riffing off their own Bingöl hoax, covering up some catastrophic failure with a sham report that would sound plausible? That was the most appealing possibility, and the easiest to explain—but that didn’t make it correct.

“She really does seem to be helping the Russians a lot here,” Hamp put in from across the room, “whether she means to or not. Any idiot could have seen trouble coming in Kurdistan in general. Whatever she’s planning to do, whoever she means to help, the east end of the country would be the place to do it. But that particular area … “ He grimaced. “Most of the Turkish Army’s pinned down in the south, around Diyarbakir, where the oil is. And that’s where the opposition’s hottest, too. Or was. If the northeast corner lights up too—if we add a second regional front—Turkey won’t have the forces to contain it.”

“’Lights up’ how? They already have separatists, and the separatists, from the sounds of it, had already won.”

“I mean, sure, they’d claimed a bit of territory in the chaos, but they weren’t really a priority. The Turks would have reclaimed the area when they had the time. If word gets out that they have a familiar going to bat for them, recovery becomes a lot more doubtful.”

“Hey, heads up,” Ethan said, pointing to his own phone, where the seal of the Numenate had just appeared. Hamp and Keisha dutifully looked at their own screens, just in time for the seal to be replaced by the bedraggled-looking face of General Tyler Green.

He looked even unhappier than he had when they last saw him, way back in Thessaloniki. A whole … two weeks ago, wasn’t it? “Let’s make this quick,” he said, half sighing. “Is Dr. Gus there too?”

“I am listening,” he affirmed from the corner of the room.

“And the location is secure?”

Keisha panned her phone around to show him. “Back room in an abandoned shop on a randomly chosen street. I can’t put up interference without killing this call, but surveillance seems unlikely, sir.”

“Very well. Let’s hear some good news. What’s your progress?”

Hamp mustered up only slightly more enthusiasm than Green himself to answer the question. “It’s possible the Bingöl gambit has succeeded to some extent, sir. These kids won’t be traveling very fast on their own, they have no logistical support, but Fatima and Ruslan are moving in the right direction.”

“You mean they’re moving away from Ankara. East. Same as their brother and sister. Anatolia’s a peninsula, Colonel. Unless they have a boat, only one compass point will do. But we’ll call that … potential partial success, too soon to say for sure. Anything else? Anything I can take to the Oval Office?”

“Song and I have been providing support around here, now and then,” Ethan offered. “Did some heavy lifting over in Batman just the other day, cleared a bunch of roads, gave a little security help.”

“I’m sure the citizens of Batman appreciate your help, Major Honoré,” Green replied, carefully and correctly pronouncing the town’s name as baht-MAHN. “As do I, for not completely wasting your abilities while on duty. In return for your valorous service, I will not order Colonel Hampton to assign you eight hours of milch duty. Anything else? Chief Graham? Any new insights, leads, or plans?”

“I’m inclined to try and intercept the duo,” she said. “They’re leaving the clearest trail, and with two of them they’ll be easier to track. That’s why we’re in Malatya right now.”

“Fair enough. Any more specific plans?”

“Yes, sir. We had been planning to see how they move, then adjust course, or repeat the Bingöl trick to encourage them to adjust for us. Only—”

“Only the actual Nadezhda Marshall is very inconsiderately putting up her own trail. Which is why, unless you have a particular reason you have not yet disclosed for believing you can intercept the other two, I would like you to focus your attention on her. Given that she is now engaging friendly forces, I would have hoped you would do as much anyway.”

“I … wasn’t sure that would be a productive approach, sir. And I’m still not.”

The General’s face got ever so slightly more irritable. “Really? Explain.”

“We don’t know for certain that Nadia was there, or why she was there if she was. She was always the most promising candidate for defection, but direct antagonism could drive her right into the enemy’s hands.”

“Which is where she appears to be at present anyway, so I don’t quite understand your reticence. She is already actively hostile. The Turks report the loss of seventeen men in that failed offensive.”

“The Turks report a lot of things, sir. And this is only one incident, not a campaign.”

“Chief Graham. Absolutely nothing about this theater, from any belligerent’s point of view, merits the dignity of the label ‘campaign.’ It’s something closer to a no-holds-barred saloon brawl from an old-timey Western, inflated to the scale of a good-sized country. Even before this child resurfaced, we had reports of Syrian, Iraqi, Israeli, Iranian, Russian, Ukrainian, Azeri, and Lebanese nationals at work in Turkish Kurdistan. Yesterday afternoon—shortly after the Patnos incident, but before I heard of it—I was informed that one of our humanitarian convoys in Kars came under attack from Armenians.

“Just consider that a moment, please: Armenians. I just checked: Turkey’s last Armenian terrorist died thirty years ago. The genocide was in the past, and nobody forgot it, but everybody accepted that life goes on. Now it’s open season again, and they’re looking to take back a piece of Turkey for themselves as well. Greater Armenia. And this country still has plenty of past left to dredge up.

“Which is why it really doesn’t matter what Nadezhda Marshall plans or intends. If she is active and unsupervised in that region, she is not going to be anything but a further destabilizing factor. Your orders, as of this moment, are to fix that, and I expect those orders to be obeyed promptly. Am I understood?”

There was only one answer you could give to that question. “Yes, sir.”

“I am not particular as to how she is neutralized. If she agrees to operate under American supervision, I would welcome that. If she enters our custody in a noncombatant capacity, that is also acceptable. If harsher means are required, well, fortunes of war. The only unacceptable outcome is further incidents like Patnos. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. In the absence of any new and relevant intelligence, I want word that you’re on the ground in that town by dawn tomorrow. Dismissed.” The Numenate seal reappeared over his face, then the screen went black.

“Well, you heard the man,” Ethan said, getting to his feet and stretching. “Let’s move.”

The small-time grocer who’d owned this shop hadn’t bothered to board up when he fled the city; by the time Keisha’s group got to it, it had already been broken into and thoroughly ransacked. All that was left was the creaking furniture and file boxes in the back room. They didn’t bother to secure the back door behind them when they left.

“I looked it up last night,” Hamp said, “and it’s a six-hour drive, easy. Maybe eight. Fun times.”

“Well, I wouldn’t trust the airport,” Ethan replied. “Guess Song will have to pitch in again. God, I’m sick of this car.”

Keisha took her usual spot in the back seat, next to Dr. Gus. “You are troubled,” he remarked as they buckled in.

“Yeah, I can’t say I’m thrilled about any of this.”

“Which is reasonable. Are you prepared to do what is necessary?”

Both men up front paused to listen in on her answer. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Not much point in going if you’ve got second thoughts,” Ethan said.

“We don’t even know what’s going on here. We might show up and—and find that Nadia’s long gone and gone to ground again. Or that the whole story was just some garbled bullshit to begin with.”

“Is that what you expect,” Hamp said, “or what you want?”

She slumped against the window. “Both? I mean, I knew this kid. Not super-well, but I knew her. She was messed up, you could see that, and she could be a brat, but I always thought there was this basically sweet little girl underneath, you know? This girl who liked crafts, and church, and should have been looking forward to meeting up with her school friends after Christmas break, not invading Istanbul.”

“You feel betrayed,” Dr. Gus said. Ethan started the ignition, and rolled out into Malatya’s midday traffic.

“Betrayed? What are you talking about?”

“Nadia has not met your expectations. You invested much time and energy into her rescue, with the end goal of bringing her under American protection. She disappeared, and you have been concerned for her welfare for the past week—only for her to emerge in service to the enemy. An affront.”

“Doctor, that’s crazy. She’s barely even a teenager. Whatever she’s doing, it’s not even clear that she’s doing it of her own will. Didn’t the Russians take custody of the smaller children? The Metics? They have hostages.”

“You are right,” he said. “It would be illogical, for you to resent the child under these circumstances.” He turned to look out his window.

“Well bless your heart, Doctor,” she muttered, and looked out her own.

Malatya was a good-sized city, with a pre-war population just under a million, and stable by current standards; there was an international military presence, and no record of any paraphysical activity in the metropolitan area. Refugees were already coming in from Diyarbakir to the southeast, rapidly enough that Keisha figured the grocer would find his shop occupied by a new business if he ever returned to the city. They passed an ancient flatbed truck loaded down with furniture and people, several of the latter hanging dangerously off the rails around the back. Moving day.

“You know,” Hamp said to her as they eased their way through traffic and out of the city, “the girl’s at a tricky age. I remember twelve. Kids that age, they want to believe, and they want to belong. It wouldn’t be that strange for her to settle in with people she met on the way. She can’t be alone forever.”

Consoling parenting advice from Hamp, for a kid who wasn’t even hers. It had come to this. “Look, it’s fine. We’re not committing to any one course of action yet. Let’s just get there, and see what’s going on.”

“And be prepared for anything,” Ethan added.

“Yes. It might be that Nadia needs our help.”

“Not what I meeeaaaant,” Ethan said in a quiet, obnoxious sing-song, and lunged onto the highway just ahead of a dusty eighteen-wheeler. Keisha chose to ignore him. The big rig honked its horn vigorously, and swerved into the next lane.

They had till dawn, which was plenty of time. Not so tight a deadline, nor so dire a situation, that they could justify pulling an emissor out near heavy road traffic. There was nothing for it but to stick to the ground until they made open country; Hamp had developed a knack for plotting trails through just-developed-enough rural hamlets that Tantrum Song could feed without causing massive pileups. In the meantime, they had to trust to Ethan’s lead foot to minimize their time on the road.

They had to drive another fifteen minutes before they could take to the air, and landed just east of Elâzığ shortly after to get their bearings and check for updates. Keisha promptly pulled up the map, and saw a new blue dot.

She sighed, and shut her eyes, and stuffed the phone back in her pocket.