“Do you have a notepad ready?” Tech asks. “It’s fuckin, complicated. The important thing is that the contact seems to be a guy named Yuri Ivanov. He’s this reclusive arms dealer figure who apparently had an agent of his move an aether warhead into Mosul.”

“Desmond and Claire told me the rough outline,” Dawn replies. “They’re always getting up to some shit.”

“They wanted to see you, by the way. Tonight, at the Osiris, I think. Something Egyptian.”

“You’ve never been there?”

“Never heard of it.”

“You should come! You’ll love it, it’s connected to this club called the Du’at, it rules. I know the owner.”

“Maybe. They knew who I was, who I’m contracted to.”

“Did they hurt your feelings?”

“Only a smidge,” Tech jokes. “I’ve got thick skin, though.”

“Anything else? Or just Ivanov and this ‘agent’ guy?”

Tech purses his lips, takes another sip of ice water. The owner of the establishment returns with three menus. Cyrus readily takes his, the two more adult Janissaries do so more hesitantly.

“Well, they also said something about this E-K-A-U type deal. Mister Okonkwo had a flier; it looked almost Sumerian. At least, the artwork.”

“E-K-A-U?” Dawn repeats. She’s just as lost as he is.

“No clue?”

“No clue.”

“He said that they had people rolling around in power armour with ‘astronaut’ helmets. The way he described it, it sounds like the ones we have.”

“I’ll bring it up with him tonight. Annnnnnnnnnything else?”

“This Mateev guy is dead. K.I.A.”

“What?”

“Yeah, the red-head lawyer told us.”

“Celine?”

“How do you know her?”

Dawn hesitates on the other side of the line. “That’s confidential C-SPEAR business.”

“But I’m C-SPEAR!”

“You’re C-SPEAR, Levant Division. That stuff is C-SPEAR, Studies and Observations Group. Prior assignment. Illegal stuff.”

“Interesting?”

“If you want to know, ask the Chief. He’ll have a better shot of getting those files from central servers,” Dawn says. “He oversaw it.”

Oversaw? No, we’re getting off track.

“Mateev?”

“Right. Celine said he died?”

“That is correct.”

“Wanna chalk it up to Palantir and lighten our workload?”

“It seems irresponsible to just take them at their word.”

Dawn grumbles something on the other side of the line. Something about him being ‘too fucking responsible,’ or something.

“So,” Tech asked, then halted at the approach of the owner of the restaurant. “Hold on one second.”

Cyrus ordered a pizza, cheese and pepperoni and bacon and ham, meat-lovers, along with a soda and a heaping side of fries. Teenage appetite. Dimitri just got a simple sub sandwich, sliced turkey and chicken and lettuce and tomatoes. Tech pointed to a club sandwich; triple-decker, turkey and ham and hot salami and bacon and lettuce and tomatoes and onions and mayonnaise and some other sauce. His search for an acceptable chip butty or a pie barm in the city of Nineveh continued, so this enormous sandwich would have to do instead.

“Where do we start?”

Tech heard a gale of wind, along with the furious honking of a distant car horn over the line. She stepped outside.

“One of the Wolfes mentioned something interesting,” she said. Her voice was clearer, too, the underlying static fully removed.. Stepping outside of that concrete ziggurat is sure to make things less frazzled. She hears a familiar voice in the background. Russian-accented. Oh, fuck me.

“Who are you talking to?” Anastasia calls from the distance. When Dawn replies with ‘Tecumseh!’ Tech can almost hear the woman race up to the phone.

“What are you talking about?” Anastasia suddenly asks, far too close to the phone for Dawn to be comfortable. Tech hears her practically snarl at Anastasia before putting her phone on speakerphone.

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“Um, hello, ‘Tasia,” Tech says.

“Hello Tecumseh!” Anastasia replies. “What are you talking about?”

Tech sighs. He puts his own speakerphone on, letting the trio listen in. Dimitri hears Anastasia’s voice and rests his forehead on the table. If he could be anywhere else, he would, but Tech would grab him if he tried to leave.

“We’re trying to figure out where to start with our investigation,” Tech explains.

“I have idea!” Anastasia exclaims back. “The Southern Seas Company. Wolfe-Hohenzollern said that they were mafia-affiliated and I know that they have an office in Nineveh. I think it is on TKN, near intersection with First Street!”

‘TKN’ means Tukulti-Ninurta Street. Northernmost of the east-west facing roads. First street is the closest of the streets to the river. In a normal city it would be named Riverside Street or something.

“How does he know?” Tech asks.

“He just said it like it was common knowledge,” Dawn interrupts. “It was Wolfe-Hohenzollern, so, you’know.”

A right prick, but a prick who was usually right. That he was from the Euro-Wolfes made it that more infuriating.

“And you want to pay them a visit?”

“Exactly!” Anastasia replies. She seems a bit too excited for this. Maybe she’s still riding that adrenaline wave from hurling slurs at Santiago.

“Can you promise that you won’t do anything stupid?” Dawn asks ‘Tasia.

“I promise!”

It means as little as a vodaruble.

“Tech, you catch all of that?” Dawn asks.

“Southern Seas Company, mobbed-up, TKN and First street. Keep ‘Tasia on a short leash.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“i know where that is” another voice pops into the conversation. Eva. Tech’s heart almost skips a beat. “theres a mcdonalds across the road”

She seems exhausted, still. Tech can hear the snapping of chewing gum. Probably trying to rid her mouth of the taste of blood. She loved strawberry chewing gum if he remembered right. At least, that’s what her lips tasted like the last night they were together. Then life got in the way.

He suppresses his old memories. Not exactly happier times, but times before Nineveh, hell, before Afghanistan. Both had almost died, Eva walked out a different person than she was, and then Nineveh thrust Xiuying and Sophia and Anastasia upon Tech. How horrible; an incredibly handsome man has to choose which of four beautiful women to have sex with, what villainy has made sweet Tecumseh such a victim?

“So, do you want to meet there?”

“if you pay me for food”

Tech inhales through his teeth. Tastes strawberries.

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“shut up you want mcdonalds too”

Tech did want McDonalds. He could really go for the greasiest possible burger and extremely salty fries made by stoned college students working the midnight shift.

“Fine. Lets say nine, tonight.”

“sounds good”

“Did you bring the armoury?” Anastasia asked. She meant an enormous Range Rover that the group kept in the Burj Wolfe’s garage. Aether-dipped titanium plating and bulletproof glass and enough weapons and ammunition to besiege a small town.

“No. You’ll have to bring it, we’re preoccupied.”

“And if you get to McDonalds first can you get me some chicken nuggets?”

“Put Dawn back on the damn phone, ‘Tasia,” Tech tells her. In the background, he heard Eva say something like “buy your own damn chicken nuggets”

Dawn retakes possession of the cellphone.

“Is that it?” she asks.

“That’s it.”

“Good luck tonight.”

“I’ll need it more than you.”

“Probably. Don’t get killed, please.”

“I’ll do my best.”

And he finally hangs up the phone. He’s been talking to Dawn, and Anastasia and Evelyn, for almost thirty minutes. And when he thinks he can finally have some peace and quiet…

“You alright?”

Tech turns to face Cyrus.

“Huh?”

“When that woman spoke, your face, I dunno, you seemed sadder or some shit.”

“Which woman?”

“Uh, the one that sounds like you.”

“She doesn’t sound like me.”

“Yeah she does,” Cyrus contests. He clears his throat and Tech realizes that he’s going to do his best British accent. “You both sound, er, Bri’ish.”

Somehow, his British accent sounds almost Afrikaner.

“She anything to you?” Cyrus asks.

Tech thinks for a moment. If he says nothing or tells the kid to fuck off, he’ll just keep badgering him. Or her, to make it worse. And the kid hasn’t done anything to deserve being told to fuck off.

“If I say that things just, didn’t work out between us a while ago, is that good enough?”

“What happened?”

Kid’s too bloody inquisitive.

“Just,” Tech starts, stops, and starts again. “Sometimes two people are compatible in one way and incompatible another. I wish it were different, but, it’s the way it is.”

“I’m not sure if that makes, sense, I guess. Like,” Cyrus starts, and thrums the table with his fingertips.

“Kid, nothing in this city makes any sense. Hell, nothing much in this world makes sense. The quicker you realize that, the faster you’ll see something that you can make sense of.”

Cyrus takes it in stride. “Okay. You don’t, hate each other and shit, right?”

“No, no, no, no. We’re still close. But, well –”

“The sex was mediocre and she couldn’t get over it,” Dimitri loudly interrupts.

“I’m going to strangle you.”

The sex was mind-blowing. If it were only about the sex the two are still together. He went over to her apartment a week ago and left the next morning happier than ever. But it’s not about the sex, or, not just about it. I’m close to the end and don’t want to face the world alone. But if he admitted that to Cyrus, he’d come off as an enormous baby.

“Please do, I don’t want to deal with Anastasia tonight,” Dimitri replies. “She will make me attempt suicide and I may even succeed.”

“Maybe she hates you because the sex is mediocre and she can’t get over it,” Tech replies and a frown creases Dimitri’s face. He quiets down and returns to his phone. He’s probably two years back in some model’s feed. Hot, but surgically enhanced and refined. Closer to Sophia than Anastasia. He’s got a type, at least. Shame that Sophia’s so distracted all the time. Maybe he’d be less of a miser.

The owner of the establishment distracts them from this horrid, insipid conversation with their meals. Tech hears his stomach growl at the sight of them.

Cyrus’s pizza and fries come first, then Dimitri’s sub and finally Tech’s triple-decker club sandwich. But first, Tech steals one of Cyrus’s fries.

“I’m buying,” is his excuse. The fries are slightly soggy and not salty enough. Could be good with gravy.

He thinks of what’s going to happen tonight, what might happen. It won’t hurt to get there early and case the joint. At the best, they’re going in for a robbery. That’s if they’re able to keep Anastasia in check. At worst, it’ll be a massacre for whoever’s in that building. Either mafia goons or hired security. They’ll need weapons and armour and ammunition, they’ll need a plan of attack. They’ll need a way to make sure Anastasia doesn’t go off the deep end again – maybe putting Cyrus on her hip, or her on his hip, will keep her cool and loose. He needs a place to start.

Best to stop moping about what was with Eva, or stop wondering about what might be with, say, Xiuying. None of those are Janissary problems. Janissary problems are breaching and clearing, securing good sightlines and entrances and exits, bringing the right kind of weapon to a gunfight, and making sure that no matter how many people die, you’re not one of them.

Best to start with this sandwich.