Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

Hayha had been one of many tutors Lilith had hired to prepare her for the life she led. And though he was ancient and near death, his mind was sharp and his lessons profound. Hayha had been a master killer, and yet his eyes were always calm, always peaceful. The Italian never understood that. When she looked in the mirror she saw the eyes of some vile thing. Something tainted and impure. Something evil.

She sat in a folding chair in the shadows of the hijacked hotel room. No lights except the indirect light from the open window. Above her, a rickety ceiling fan turned continuously and there was a breeze from outside, but the curtains did not move. They were weighted down with rocks she had brought upstairs with her for that purpose. Blowing curtains could spoil a shot and they draw the eye. She did not want to attract any attention.

Ledger still sat on the floor.

The sniper leaned back from the rifle and removed a small leather case from her bag, unzipped it, and propped it on the night table. The device was the size of an e-book reader but it was a very powerful portable computer with a satellite uplink. The sniper booted the device, entered her password, and activated the voice interface.

“Authorize Arklight field protocol five.”

The monitor flashed several times and then settled on a screen saver with the smiling face of the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa spoke.

“Oracle welcomes you.”

The Oracle computer had been designed by a man named St. Germaine but re-programmed by her mother; the voice was hers as well, though with a slight alien quality when composing unique phrasing. The sniper had added the animation of the Mona Lisa to give it a less threatening feeling. She loved her mother but, like everyone else who ever met her, was deeply intimidated by her. Even the other two Mothers of the Fallen deferred to her.

“Access all data for mission coded Arklight eight-one-one-seven.”

“Accessing. Do you want to update your field report?”

“Yes.” She gave the computer a detailed report beginning with the phone call from Rasouli that morning and the resulting change in the mission for which her Arklight team had been contracted. At the conclusion of the report she said, “Collate data. I will want a set of probabilities.”

“Collating,” said Oracle. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes. I want everything you can find on Joseph Edwin Ledger. White male, early thirties, American.”

“There are ninety-seven unique instances of living people named Joseph Edwin Ledger; one-hundred and sixteen for deceased-”

“Stop. Subject is likely military or ex-military. Possibly law enforcement.”

“There is one instance of a Joseph Edwin Ledger with the Baltimore Police Department in the state of Maryland. There is also one instance of a Joseph Edwin Ledger with the United States Army Rangers. Personal identification numbers and Social Security numbers match.”

“Open a file on him. I want everything. Ledger’s background. Service record, awards, citations, reprimands, psych profiles, his politics. Anything you have.”

“There is already an active Arklight file on this subject.”

“When was the file opened and who opened it?”

The computer gave an open date from July of the previous year. “The file has an L1 code.”

L1. Lilith.

“My mother opened that file?”

“Yes.”

“Summarize the content of that file.”

Oracle began reading out information regarding several matters of grave international importance. The Seif al Din plague, which coincided with the opening of Ledger’s file. There were others, all high profile. The shutdown of the ultrasecret vault in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania; the famous Jakoby-Mengele file; and others, leading up to the Seven Kings event last December. The records were spotty and included more speculation and unofficial information than hard evidence. As the Italian woman well knew it was virtually impossible to prove anything about the DMS. Very often files of this kind suddenly vanished from even encrypted hard drives. There were rumors of a DMS supercomputer called MindReader that had an aggressive search and destroy subroutine for ferreting out this kind of information.

“Oracle,” she said, “have you been attacked in any way since this file was opened?”

“No.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“There is a note in the file stating that any questions of this kind be directed to Lilith herself. Your mother does not permit additional speculative notes to be added to the file. Would you like me to pass along a request to your mother?”

“God no,” said the sniper before she could stop herself. “No,” she corrected.

“Shall I continue reading the subject’s service record?”

“Yes.”

Ledger reached out and pulled his dog toward him, wrapping his arms around the animal and laying his head on the dog’s shoulder. What an odd thing for a man like him to do, she thought. A strangely human act, totally at odds with the things Oracle was saying: that he was emotionally fractured, that he was utterly ruthless in a fight, that he had killed people with guns, knives, explosives, his hands. However, the way he held his dog and stroked the animal’s fur and spoke to it-even though she could not hear his words-made her smile.

“Oracle, stop report,” she said. “How did my mother obtain the information for her file on Ledger?”

“That information is in a subfolder marked eyes-only. Would you like to request temporary clearance to read that report?”

The sniper took a breath, then let it out slowly. “Yes.”

“That request has been forwarded to the Mothers.”

“Continue report.”

Oracle moved from the bland details of an unremarkable military record, through a moderately interesting though short police career. The sniper found nothing of real note there, however, except that Ledger had been scheduled for enrollment in the FBI academy. There were no records of his having actually entered the academy. What really caught her interest, however, were Ledger’s psychotherapy reports and transcripts of sessions with Dr. Rudolfo Ernesto Sanchez y Martinez. Ledger was a deeply damaged individual who had a minimum of three and possibly as many as nine separate personality subtypes living in his head. Dr. Sanchez’s records indicated that Ledger had found a way to balance these personalities and even put them to work, like a committee, within his fractured mind. It was not a unique occurrence, but it was very rare; and rarer still for such a man to be accepted into the police department and, apparently, the Department of Military Sciences.

“Stop. Who recruited Ledger into the DMS?”

“Unknown, though there is a high probability that he was recruited directly by St. Germaine.”

The sniper’s pulse quickened as it did every time she heard that name.

St. Germaine.

That was one of the many names for a man currently using the name Church. St. Germaine was the name her mother used for the man. The sniper had never met him, but other Arklight agents told wild stories. She doubted most of them were true, but all of them were fascinating.

“Oracle,” she said, “why might St. Germaine risk using a field operative with Ledger’s psychological profile?”

“Unknown.”

“Speculate. Access all known data on St. Germaine and cross-reference.”

“There are one hundred and three separate field reports that include the man code-named St. Germaine under twenty-eight aliases. Twenty-six of those reports indicate a tendency to use agents with unpredictable or unstable personality types. Four of the six analysis reports uploaded by senior Arklight operators postulate that Mr. Church uses said unpredictable personalities to introduce random elements to missions.”