We had missed the ideal window in which to attack Welt and his cabal. That meant that taking the slow and steady approach would be the best. Normally I would have rushed to cut him off before he could entangle himself with political institutions and the police and military – but it was too late now. We had to plan our next moves carefully and with intent.
Ekkehard Van Walser had been revealed as the new King. I didn’t see the headlines, but I did witness the huge throng of very angry people on the streets of the twin cities. They had signs and banners and were surrounding the royal palace and parliament in force.
“Bloody hell,” Adrian said under the noise, “The entire city is out here!”
“I’m surprised that this protest has remained peaceful. Half of the population of Walser is armed to the teeth, after all. They must be hoping that they’ll step aside without having to resort to violence.”
“Any chance of that happening?”
“Not a sliver of hope for that. Welt is not going to turn back after pouring all of his efforts into achieving this. He’s a few months away from solidifying himself as the shadow King of this country. He’ll try to ride out the storm for as long as possible and hope the people get tired of protesting.”
Adrian groaned, “If only Welt agreed to take me on as a member of his little gang. I could leak all the information you want and he’d be none the wiser.”
“That’s what we’re here to do. Welt may have reasons to turn you down at the moment, but what do you think that the people under him are thinking right now?”
“They... They would be more than happy to have me on their side?”
“Exactly. Jonas, Greenblatt and Vincent are partners in his scheme, but only because they stand to benefit from it. Greed begets more greed in turn – and they’ll desire to get more from their part of the bargain. It just so happens that a young, ambitious noble with a huge business empire is looking for a side to join.”
We were both overlooking the action from the second floor of a downtown restaurant. There were hundreds of people crammed onto the small road that led towards the palace, with the crowd getting even denser the closer you got to the fenced-off building. It was highly unlikely that Ekkehard was actually there at the moment.
I was going to have to rely on Adrian and the others to handle some of the groundwork. Since they were so insistent on coming along and ‘helping’ with dealing with this issue – then I may as well take advantage of that and put them into places where they weren’t directly in danger.
Welt must have known that I was the one responsible for foiling his plan at the Academy by now. They may have run away with their tail between their legs, but at least one of them would tell him the entire story. The only factor that remained unknown was whether he believed it or not.
I’d gotten significant mileage out of people’s incredulity before. Maria Walston-Carter was a well-behaved and well-bred girl from an influential family, to profess that she was a murderer was madness to any outside observer.
“I’ll be upfront with you, we may have to kill them.”
Adrian’s face remained impassive. His mind was still back at the tower, recanting the moment he pulled the trigger and unloaded a shell filled with lead pellets into the back of that assassin.
“Is it okay to say that in a public place?”
I looked around the room. We were the only two people sitting on the second floor.
“Are you kidding?”
Adrian shrugged, “You never know! The person sitting at the table under the floorboards might have heard your voice leak through right then. What if this entire building is poorly insulated?”
And I thought that I was the paranoid one.
“Nobody is going to hear us, and even if they do they’ll discard it as their mind playing tricks on them. I want to know if you are open to following my orders with this in mind. Would you be willing to help me?”
“I’m already here, and I’m not going to be the one doing the deed.”
Adrian was being evasive. He knew what answer I was looking for when I asked the question – but he was not willing to give me it. Denial was the worst response I could receive. I didn’t want Adrian to force himself into a position he couldn’t stomach, and he shifted in his chair when he noticed that my gaze was sharpening.
“Adrian. I want to hear a yes or no answer.”
“I can’t offer a simple answer like that!” he snapped, echoing his old irritable personality once again, “It all depends on what’s going on at the time. I only stepped in back at the tower because I was worried about you getting killed by that bloke, and I didn’t even give him the final blow!”
“Are you afraid that I’ll be angry with you if you say no? The reason I brought this up originally was because I wanted to respect your boundaries. My intent is not to push you or anyone else into a situation you are not comfortable with.”
Adrian had a face like thunder. He leaned back in his seat and looked towards the ceiling. After a minute of contemplation, he reached into his pocket and retrieved the timepiece. I could feel the energy being emitted from within, and a brief expansion of my senses revealed that the crystal inside was now fully charged. On top of that – he had several leftover vials of the Horr blood stuffed into a wad of tissues.
He toyed with the mechanism, popping open the front cover and closing it again.
Click, click, click.
He placed it down on the table, halfway between us.
“I think it’d be better for you to keep a hold of this.”
“Why?”
“I charged it using some of that blood we found. It’s good for another trip back into the past – and you’ll get more use out of it than I can.”
That explained why he decided to bring even more of it with him, although the lifespan of those samples would be left up in the air now that they weren’t being refrigerated. Did it work like normal blood, or did it possess a special property that kept it fresh for an unusually long time?
Having two of me running around causing trouble did sound like a better use for the watch than any other ideas I could come up with. I reached out and took it into my hand. I would need to find a nice, isolated spot in a convenient location to set the anchor point. Hitting it every day would drain the battery again.
Adrian tried to push past my question; “What are we doing here? Your Mother didn’t tell me what kind of plan you had drawn up in there.”
I pulled a small piece of paper from my pocket and unfurled it. A handful of scrawled notes delved into the reasons we were targeting our first man.
“Micah Greenblatt is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of the group supporting Welt, but he’s also extremely important.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s a blowhard who already thinks they’ve won. Welt and the others are being cautious. There are groups and mechanisms within Walser who would be happy to take them out. Micah believes that those groups have already been cowed by their sudden takeover of the government.”
“Okay. So what are we going to do about him?”
“Veronica told me that WISA already had a file on the man before Jones took over. There was a lot of trouble swirling around him because he was always dallying with... ladies of the night.”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Adrian gave me a dry look, “Prostitutes.”
“Yes, if you want to be so bold, he would spend a huge amount of money on hiring them for a variety of purposes. The problem for him was that they had cared little for what sensitive information they were leaking to anyone willing to listen. The parties he threw and the favours he offered were an open secret, and that led to certain individuals trying to blackmail him. Before they emptied out the cabinet and burnt those folders – Frankfort claimed that he was moving a large amount of money to them again, seemingly to host a lavish party so they could rub elbows with some wavering nobles.”
“And you want me to try and make contact with him.”
“Exactly. Welt may reason that he has no need to court you now that his plan is in action, or he may desire to strengthen his position. Micah will have his own ambitions. Either way, we can use that to get closer to the group.”
Adrian cupped his cheeks with both palms and stared at me while he considered the plan. He would be responsible for playing the part and fitting in with Welt’s friends, convincing them that he would be more than happy to throw the might of his business empire behind their new vision for Walser.
He was also slightly worried that Micah would try to surround him with hired women to try and woo him. Adrian was a lot of things, but being confident with women was not one of them.
“All I have to do is get close and feed you the information you need, correct?”
“That’s right. It should be simple for you to command terms about when and where you would like to meet, and we can set up and keep an eye on you without him knowing. I can teach you some tricks to get what you want out of him.”
Adrian sighed, “Don’t worry about that. You’ve been using them on me for the past three years.”
“If you could tell - why did you always fall for them?”
Adrian grumbled under his breath and waved me away. The waitress finally reappeared from the bottom floor and gave us our food. Adrian had ordered a piece of cake, as usual.
“I’ll do it,” he declared, before swallowing a large chunk of it.
“Okay. Let us talk details...”
----------------------------------------
Locked tightly away in one of the designated safehouses found in the city – Welt stewed by the window, peering through the closed curtains and onto the street below. A small group of protestors were making their way towards the main avenue, where thousands of furious citizens had gathered to protest the suspension of parliament and the institution of a new King.
The unforeseen issue that Welt had run headfirst into was that many of the monarchists were torn between their unreserved support for revoking the treaty and their immense distaste for a third-rung royal in the form of Ekkehard Van Walser. He did not have a direct claim to the throne, with the former King’s sons being passed over in favour of him.
Welt understood that Ekkehard was a controversial pick – but he did not anticipate the reaction from the general populace to be so negative. The newspapers which weren’t on the take already savaged him as feckless, dim and overly ambitious on the front pages, and they were having an impact on their perception of him. The very last thing Welt needed was for people to perceive him as weak.
After all – the entire purpose of this scheme was to restore the esteemed position of the King as head of state! It was a statement to their rivals both domestic and international that they were not a force to be trifled with. A collection of those newspapers had piled up on his reading desk, some torn to shreds in a fit of anger.
‘USELESS EKKEHARD DETHRONES RIGHTFUL KING VAN WALSER’
“What an ungrateful lot!” Welt complained, “We’re saving them from another two decades of rot and apathy from those fools in parliament – yet now they pour onto the streets to protest? Where was this same sense of anger when we were driven down this treacherous path?”
The isolation was getting to him. He couldn’t risk showing his face with so many people out for blood, and there were indications that his previous hiding place had already been hit by a group of unknown assailants. Someone was on his tail. The home he was in was lavish by most standards, but it was still an unpleasant experience to be cooped up inside for weeks on end.
This only served to feed Welt’s monstrous ego. He was suffering under the yoke of great oppression for the sake of his countrymen! In his eyes, he was every bit as brave as the men fighting on the frontlines for Walserian freedom. Every second spent locked up inside was another drop of blood spilt on the battlefield.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in!”
Bernard Jones, the new head man in charge of WISA, stepped into the room and locked the door behind him. There were a lot of new security protocols to abide by. Getting to see Welt in person was becoming increasingly difficult.
“I’ve compiled a full report on what happened at the tower and the academy.”
Welt threw up his hands, “I already know what happened! Those worthless cowards blamed it all on one of the students! They said she killed at least three of them during the takeover. I can’t believe that they’d even offer me such a pathetic excuse!”
Bernard nodded, eager to please his new boss.
He continued, “One of them suggested that she might have been a member of the Sturmläufer. Ridiculous.”
“That would be extremely unlikely, sir.”
“Yes, I assumed as such.”
“After all – the prominence of that program was already severely reduced before the signing of the compromise treaty. It was time-consuming and expensive to train them from a young age, and they had a significantly higher mortality rate than an adult agent, not to mention the lack of perceived utility they provided as spies.”
“Did you know about the scheme before you became the new department head?”
“Not the fine details. That was kept a secret even to experienced agents such as myself. The other fatal flaw in the theory is that Maria Walston-Carter is a teenager and the daughter of a noble. She’s outside of the correct time period and they only sought to recruit those without families.”
He left the beige folder on the dining table and offered the short version of the story. One of the three men had died from an apparent cardiac arrest, and two more were shot dead during a confrontation in the garden. The group dispatched the control the academy fled out of fear of a police siege. The attack at the tower was similar, using a matching calibre of bullet. The jury was still out on how one of the enhanced secret police had been killed in that fight.
“I knew it was the right time to move away from there,” Welt murmured.
“Aside from a handful of leftover materials, there was not much to recover. The men back at the office are running a risk assessment and interviewing the people who were stationed there before the attack.”
“Just make sure that it doesn’t happen again! The last thing we need is for me or anyone else to get killed by those traitors.”
Bernard smiled – completely out of his depth and unsure of how he could stop that from happening.
“Of course, sir. I’ll get everyone working security right away.”
The number of agents killed during the firefight at the office remained unsaid. Jones had received a black eye on the very first day of his leadership, with Frankfort and Gladwell busting out of the building and taking down some of his personal lackeys in the process. Infuriatingly they disappeared into thin air soon after, with no eyewitnesses capable of placing where they escaped to.
In short, WISA was being stretched thin, fighting fires across the country and trying to stamp down unrest before it could get out of control. Welt and his friends didn’t trust the police to look after them, so it had to be WISA agents or loyal members of the military on guard duty.
“Is there anything else? Sir Vincent and Greenblatt have been expressing their concerns about the protests near the palace.”
Welt scoffed, “There’s nothing to worry about. All of the important pieces are in safe places, and these feckless commoners will grow tired of it soon enough. They have jobs to get back to. They were happy to sit back and allow Walser to rot from the inside out – so I very much doubt that they’ll be willing to take serious action now that we’re fixing it.”
Bernard had a different perspective on the problem, but he couldn’t air those concerns without upsetting a man who was clearly walking a fine line between triumph and madness.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Stay safe, sir.”
He turned and left, each wooden floorboard sending a loud whine through the apartment. One of his officers, a man named Basan, was waiting for him in the corridor near the stairs. When Bernard was certain that none of the guards on duty could hear them speak, he gave his frank impressions of the situation to him.
“That man doesn’t have the faintest idea of how dangerous this is.”
“What did he say?” Basan asked.
“Some nonsense about letting it all blow over. I’ve got reports flooding into my office stating that certain groups are already armed and beginning to organize, not to mention that attack on the tower. I bet Frankfort and Gladwell were involved. It was clean. Exactly the kind of precision work they’re known for. When has this damned country ever allowed change to occur unpunished?”
“He’s going to cut you loose if he hears that.”
“I know. The only thing we can do now is hold on for dear life and see where it ends up. It’s our job to take care of the chaos, and Welt is the only man willing to go this far to see our collective goal through to the end.”
They left through the back door of the building, watched at all times of day by a dedicated doorman. Nobody entered or exited the building without him knowing – and he kept a thorough record of every face, name and time of visit.
“Micah said that he wants more agents assigned to his next party.”
Bernard glowered at the overcast sky above.
“Doesn’t that idiot know that we have better places to assign those men?”
But the problem was that he’d signed himself and the entire agency up to be the personal guard dogs of Welt and his supporters. Far from a group of selfless monarchists, they were the exact image of the type of parasitic socialite that revolted the lower classes. They were only going along with Welt because they saw money in being on the winning side.
Bernard was not the ideal pragmatist. Welt liked him because he was a vicious defender of the monarchy and a staunch anti-republican. At the same time, he was a man who grew up in a middle-class background and saturated with messaging decrying the greed and avarice of the nobility. They may have been essential to Welt’s power base, but Bernard would not shed a tear for them meeting an unfortunate end.
“Sorry, I didn’t mention it before because of the meeting with Welt.”
“It’s fine. How many do we have on standby?”
“...None.”
“Then find a couple of lollygaggers in the office and tell them to look tough. If he complains, tell him to hire some private guards instead of begging for scraps from us. We have bigger problems than keeping him and his courtesans safe.”
“Will do.”
Bernard kept his eyes on the prize. He was certain that Frankfort and Gladwell would come for him eventually. They wanted payback for what happened at the agency, and they were as loyal to the rule of law as anyone else he knew. He couldn’t let paranoia consume him at such a crucial time.
He just had to keep fighting these fires until it was all over and done with.