James Swallow - Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

Anna reached for the door to the medicine cabinet without looking in the mirror.

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

The town house had once been a hotel, an exclusive boutique lodge in a shady mews just a few blocks away from the greensward of Hyde Park. Like so much of the city, it sat in unconcerned contrast with the sheer-sided corporate towers emerging from the streets around it, the pale stone of the five-story exterior understated, the rectangular windows lit from within by a warm glow not lost through the thickness of armored polyglass. From the outside, it seemed no different from any of its neighbors; but the structure of the town house was reinforced and hardened against anything up to a rocket attack.

Saxon glanced around the fourth-floor room and took in the clean, sparse decor; white walls and chrome-framed furniture. A print of Rubin’s The Flute Player hung on one wall, a large thinscreen monitor mirroring it on the far side of the room. The six operatives sat around a long, glass-topped conference table, each dressed in what passed for civilian attire—although to a trained eye none of the Tyrants could shake the aura of a soldier, even when armor and weapons were out of reach.

At first, Saxon thought the town house was some sort of operations center, perhaps the London base for the Tyrants; but then he had glimpsed slivers of the rooms on the lower floors through half-open doors. He saw living spaces, a study, a kitchen—and dotted around, the touches that showed a family lived in this place. On the third-floor landing, Saxon passed a framed photo and had to look twice; Jaron Namir gazed back out at him, dressed in a suit and wearing a yarmulke, smiling broadly. A woman in yellow and two children, a boy and a girl, shared his good cheer. The image was jarring; try as he might, Saxon couldn’t connect the man in the picture with the man he had seen kill silently with no pause, no flicker of remorse.

They were in Namir’s home. Something about the idea of that ground against Saxon’s every ingrained instinct. The idea of a man like him, a man like Namir having a life and a family outside the unit, seemed false. Somehow, unfair.

In the wake of the mission in Moscow, the team had gone through a cursory review aboard the transport plane as it flew west, back into European airspace. As with every other operational debrief, Saxon had felt as if they were going through the motions, not just for themselves, but for some unseen observer. The people who gave the orders were watching, he was certain of it. Not for the first time, he wondered if they would ever show their faces.

Seated around the table, Namir led them through the postmortem once again. On the plane, they had given their reports one at a time; now, with all of them together, Saxon felt the pressure of the unanswered questions in his thoughts.

He leaned forward. “I could have brought Kontarsky in alive.”

Hardesty gave him an arch look. “Was that ever the objective?”

Saxon ignored him, turning to Namir. “You said Kontarsky was working with Juggernaut. He was a high-value target. He must have had intel we could use.”

“The minister was compromised,” Namir replied. “Anything we’d have been able to compel from him through interrogation would have been marginal at best. We didn’t need what he knew.”

Saxon’s eyes narrowed. Despite what Namir had told him earlier, he was sure of Kontarsky’s reaction when he mentioned Operation Rainbird. The name meant nothing to the man.

Namir saw his train of thought and headed him off. “You need to see past this, Ben. Don’t make it personal. Kontarsky was a cancer in the Russian federal government. We cut him out.”

“Sends a message,” offered Barrett in a languid tone. “Anyone deals with Juggernaut, they’re not protected.”

“We’re not in the business of taking prisoners,” Namir went on. “You know that.”

Hardesty leaned back in his chair. “As we’re on the subject, maybe the limey can explain why it is he didn’t just double-tap the creep the moment he found him?”

“I told you. I could have brought him in.”

“You don’t get to make that choice,” Hardesty replied. “You’re not in command of this unit.

We’re not your little PMC scout troop, Saxon. You lost that, remember?”

Saxon studied the other man. “Maybe if you were actually on the deck with the rest of us, instead of hiding behind a camo net four hundred meters away, I might have some respect for your opinion, Yank” He gave the last word a sneer. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you see everything down that rifle scope.”

“What I did see was you talking to the mark,” insisted the sniper. “And someone else, too, maybe?”

“Kontarsky was the only one in the room,” Saxon replied, a little quicker than he would have liked. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hermann, Federova, and Barrett watching the exchange, gauging his reaction.

Do you know what you are doing, mercenary? The ghost-voice’s questions returned to him. Do you know what master you serve?

The misgivings muttering at the edges of his thoughts were there, clear and undeniable. Saxon broke eye contact with Hardesty as Namir stood up and crossed the room to a window.

“I understand your intentions,” said the commander. “But I need all of you to follow orders when I give them. We may not have allegiance to a flag anymore, but we all must share allegiance to the Tyrants. If we don’t have that, then we’re no better than Juggernaut or any of the other anarchists out there.” He threw a look toward Saxon and Hermann. “You two are our newest recruits. You both understand that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” replied Hermann, without hesitation. In turn, Saxon gave a wary nod.

Namir went on. “There are reasons for everything we do. Reasons for every order I give you. Every mission.” He smiled slightly, the craggy face softening for a brief moment. “We cannot bring stability if we don’t have equilibrium in our ranks.” Namir’s gaze crossed to Hardesty, and his tone hardened again. “Clear?”

The sniper pursed his lips. “Clear,” he repeated.

He will never tell us , Saxon realized. Whoever is pulling the strings, he’s never going to pull back the curtain on them. The question that came next pressed to the front of his thoughts: Can I live with that?

In the months since Namir had plucked him from the field hospital in Australia, Saxon had earned more money than he had in years of service with Belltower and to the British Crown. The Tyrants had fitted him with high-spec augmentation upgrades, given him access to weapons and hardware that had been beyond his reach in the SAS or as a military contractor. Downtime between missions was spent at secure resorts, the likes of which were open only to corporate execs and the very rich. And the missions… the missions were the most challenging he’d ever had. Putting aside Hardesty’s irritating manner, Saxon meshed well with all the Tyrant team members. He couldn’t deny that he liked the work. They were free of all the paperwork and second-guessing he’d waded through as someone else’s line soldier. None of the Tyrants wasted time saluting and sweating the trivial crap; they just got on with the business of soldiering, and the appeal of that simple fact held Ben Saxon tight.

He liked being here. Despite all the doubts, it still felt right. After all the two- or three-man operations, the tag-and-bags, the terminations and infiltrations, and then the Moscow gig, Saxon felt as if he had graduated. He was in; but part of him remained troubled, and it annoyed him that he couldn’t fully articulate it.