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SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Nemo

“I think this is a classic case of misdirection,” Midas said.

Midas sat at a computer directly in front of the observation room window, Scheherazade at his side, her front paws on the window frame. Her attention was riveted on Haskell, who was back in the conference room and curled up in one of the high-backed chairs at the table, doodling on a notepad she’d found. Nemo was in the middle of the line of men standing in a semicircle directly behind Midas.

“I agree with Midas,” Steel said. “Cerberus is known for hitting hard targets for whatever cause he’s pushing at the time. He has no history of endangering civilians when he strikes. He has no history of targeting people, period. Doing so now is out of character.”

“It’s been my experience that bombers have little conscience when it comes to innocent lives standing in the way of their causes,” TB snarled.

His parents had been killed in the Dizengoff bus bombing in 1994 when he was seven years old. After years of abuse and neglect in an orphanage, years of being ostracized in the army for his interrogation and torture skills, and then years of self-imposed isolation due to his work on the dark web as a hired procurer, he was still a grumpy bastard. Thirty years later, TB was still bitter. Even meeting, falling in love with, and committing himself to a romance novelist hadn’t quite softened him.

“Haskell is a jewel thief,” Steel pointed out. “What purpose would an ecoterrorist have in blowing up a jewel thief?”

Waters’ left side was leaned up against the frame of the window. His thumb and first two fingers of his right hand were pulling on his lip, a sure sign he was working through information. “We’ve got a device that matches Cerberus’ signature down to the etching of the three-headed dog. We’ve got a target—a popular café over its maximum capacity in the middle of Los Angeles—which is not his usual M.O. Is it possible he’s changing his game?”

Midas argued, “Bombers do practice and build their skills, but not this late in their development. By this time, he’s perfected his trade. However, his motivation has always been the environment. It would take a catalyst of epic proportions to trigger him to suddenly change his methods and targets. Today’s bomber is a copycat.”

TB grunted. “I don’t trust him, no matter what your profiles say.”

Waters frowned. “Still, this feels not only purposeful but personal somehow.”

Nemo looked over his shoulder at his twin. “Midas? When was the last time Cerberus was active? ”

Midas clicked a few keys on his laptop. “Nova, what is the last record of activity surrounding the ecoterrorist, Cerberus?”

The polished female voice piped through the computer’s speakers. “Hello, Midas. The last record of Cerberus’ activity is from June twenty-second, 2021. Cerberus was given credit for damaging an oil rig in Bahamian waters. He was believed to be working with the environmentalist group SafeSeas to stop drilling in that area as they believed the rig’s production was poisoning the coral reefs.”

Waters stared at Midas for a moment before speaking. “I didn’t realize you were so far with the program. It almost sounds human.”

Midas smiled. “Needs a few tweaks yet, but she’s coming along. Go ahead.” He gestured to the computer screen and sat back in his chair, a smug smile on his face, preening like a proud new father. “Ask her what you want to know.”

Waters asked, “What’s its name again?”

The voice answered for itself, “Good afternoon, team leader. I am called Nova.”

Waters froze in surprise at the direct address, then proceeded to shake his head as if to clear it. “Nova, how did Cerberus attack the rig?”

“I am happy to supply the information you requested, Waters. Cerberus attacked the rig using a yacht, which he programmed to function similarly to a drone. Using a home video game apparatus and the rig’s own WiFi system, he deployed the craft and directed it to crash into one of the support struts beneath the rig. The blast was a low-yield explosive, meant to stop production, but not destroy the rig altogether or create pollution to an already damaged area.”

Everyone stared at the computer.

Someone whistled.

Midas beamed. “Right now, she only recognizes Waters, Nemo, and me. I haven’t finished uploading the voice samples into the system. When that’s done, she’ll recognize all of you, Cherry, God, Kubrick, and Flame as well.”

Demon shook his head. “That’s kind of creepy.”

“Kind of?” TB echoed.

Waters pushed forward with his questioning. “Nova, were there any casualties?”

The computer responded, “Three rig employees were treated for second-degree burns they received when attempting to extinguish the flames from the explosion. There were no fatalities.”

“And what is the current status of the rig and its operations?”

“With the attack on the rig, SafeSeas achieved their goal, which was to shut down drilling. However, it is only a temporary work stoppage. At this time, the only individuals on the rig are a skeleton crew working to complete repairs before the oil company can resume drilling. Current estimates put oil production recommencing in March of 2023.”

“Steel and Midas are right,” Nemo declared. “There’s no way Cerberus is responsible for today. What cause would motivate him to hit a Rodeo Drive coffee shop in its peak hours of operation? Protesting the use of whole milk?”

There was a chuckle around the room.

Waters glanced at Nemo. “We need her to start talking.”

TB asked Nemo, “What has she been doing in there by herself since you recaptured her?”

Nemo scowled. “I didn’t ‘recapture’ her. She was never a prisoner.”

TB rolled his eyes. “Let me rephrase. What has she been doing in there by herself since you brought her back to the gilded cage of the conference room? ”

Nemo decided to ignore TB’s taunt. “Nothing.” He shrugged. “Drawing.”

“Drawing?”

“Drawing.”

“Drawing…”

“Yes, Turd Blossom, drawing.”

“Drawing what?” TB ground out.

“She’s drawn a lot of different things. Five plus pages of junk, near as I can tell. Cartoon cats. Diamonds. Air vents. Batman clouds, coffee cups?—”

“Batman clouds? What the hell are Batman clouds?” TB interrupted.

“Those stupid things on the television show with the words inside them.” There was silence in the room. “Christ, even we had that in Johannesburg. Please don’t tell me you people have never watched Batman . You know… Zip! Bam! Boom! Kapow!”

“I get it, I get it,” TB admitted.

“The most recent page looks like some sort of shape arrangement. I can’t tell.”

Exasperated, Waters pushed for an answer. “Nemo, we don’t have time to analyze her artwork like a Rorschach inkblot.”

Without waiting for an order, Nemo left the viewing room and walked next door to the conference room with everyone in his wake. As soon as the door opened, Scheherazade trotted over to Haskell and put her head in the girl’s lap. When he reached her side, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Tiny?” His voice was soft. “I need you to start talking.”

She nodded. “Cherry should be here, too, I think.”

Nemo looked up as the men filed into the room. “Demon, we need Cherry.”

The medic turned on his heel and went to collect their handler. Since Haskell had selected what was normally Nemo’s seat, he simply stood at her side. By the time Demon returned with Cherry, the men had all taken their usual seats, leaving her no choice but the empty seat to his right.

Waters reached for the starfish controller and depressed the red button. Instantly, the windows tinted so that they were impenetrable to light, sound, or view. The monitors changed screens to show an alarmed map of the building, with the lighting in the room moving from white to red. A deafening thunk signaled the doors had gone into lockdown mode. “Haskell, I think you better walk us through this from the beginning. You clearly know things we don’t, and I, for one, am tired of being in the dark.”

Haskell shared a glance with Cherry before looking around the table.

“I’m not sure what Nemo’s already told you about how we met.”

Nemo assured her, “Midas is the only one who knows any details, and he only knows what he overheard on the headset. Most of our time together, I could hear him if needed, but we were muted from him.”

Relief passed quickly over her features. With a comforting caress to Scheherazade’s head, Haskell uncurled from the confines of the high-backed chair and sat up straight. “Right. I first met Nemo in 2016 when both of us broke into the same museum in Valencia. When I unexpectedly crashed through an air duct, we were forced to improvise our exit together.”

Haskell looked down the table at the handler, who nodded at her in encouragement.

“A few months later, Cherry found me in Paris. She extended me a folder with a job offer, informing me that if I opened the folder and then changed my mind, I would disappear. I had serious obligations at home, so I declined to open the offer, and we parted ways. The next day, she found me again, only this time, she gave me her number. Said if I changed my mind, I should call her.

“In October of 2018, just a few months after Nemo and I ran into each other again in Riquewihr, my personal circumstances changed. I felt that I needed out of England. That was when I found myself working for an underground group called Mythos, whose focus was on rescuing victims of sex trafficking.”

“How does that work for a jewel thief?” TB asked.

“My breaking and entering skills were helpful in collecting reconnaissance on locations where victims were kept. Sometimes, if it was just one or two individuals, I would lead them to safety. Larger groups were handled by Loki, Gilgamesh, and Medusa.

“Six weeks ago, Mythos sent me to Zimbabwe to investigate a rumor about an uptick in diamonds coming from the fields around the Mzingwane Mine. I managed to get inside, but unfortunately, I was made within a couple of hours. I saw something completely unexpected, and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. In order to escape, I needed a quick exit, but Mythos was halfway across the globe and couldn’t get to me in time to help. My only option was to call Cherry.

“It took some time, but with her exit contacts, I was able to work my way to Nairobi and catch a flight to Los Angeles. When I arrived, Cherry picked me up from the airport.”

“And Cerberus?” Even Nemo heard the edge in his voice.

“He contracts for Mythos on occasion when they need… distractions of a loud and destructive type.” Her gaze went down to her pad of paper and the drawing there. “Obviously, this bomb placement was deliberate. A pressure plate underneath a chair means it’s supposed to be triggered by a person. It just wasn’t meant for me to trigger it.”

“How do you know that?” Nemo asked .

“When I was listening in on the earbud at the café, you guys were talking about the stamp on the bomb belonging to Cerberus. That’s impossible.”

Nemo observed her face as it heated up under his scrutiny. “And you know this because…?”

He watched her eyes shy away from his. “I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known you.”

Oh, hell no!

Nemo’s entire body went still. He had never experienced jealousy before, but he was pretty sure the red-hot heat coursing through his body qualified. “You know him. How, exactly, do you know him?”

“We work together for Mythos.”

He clenched his teeth. To try and school his features and verbal responses, he looked at the shapes she’d drawn on the paper in front of her.

While he wanted to rage at her for her relationship with Cerberus, he knew it was irrational to do so. She had only said they worked together. No matter how much his brain wanted to translate that into a relationship, he knew it was a ridiculous jump in logic. He also knew he had no right to be jealous. It wasn’t as if he’d been celibate after being with Haskell, and it would be hypocritical to be angry with her for being involved with anyone else, no matter how much that thought hurt him.

In a sudden moment of clarity, the arrangement on the page made sense to him. “This is the layout of the café,” he concluded. “The shapes are the tables and chairs. The letters are people?”

Midas used his camera to take a photo of her drawing, then uploaded it to his laptop and projected it on the telescreen. Haskell talked them through the moments from that morning. “We stopped to get something to eat, but when we arrived, the café was overcrowded. There was a long line, so I decided to go outside and watch for a table to open.

“About twenty minutes later, Cherry brought out our tray. She stopped for a moment to talk to the owner. That was when a man in a brown suit got up from his seat and offered it to me. He even politely pushed in my chair. His companion, a man in a black suit, was standing between the other chair and the table, packing up a briefcase. I thought he pushed in his chair, but that must have been when he set the pressure plate. They walked away, and shortly after that, a breeze blew through and stole the extra napkins I had brought and placed on the table, so I got up and chased them down.”

Demon’s voice broke through. “How did you end up in the other seat?”

“I was at least five meters away chasing down the napkins. By that time, Cherry had finished her conversation, and when she came over to the table, she sat where I had been. Both chairs were open, and naturally, she chose the one closest to her, so I sat down in the other one.”

She sighed. “I’ll admit, I piss people off all the time when I strike, but not enough to blow me into a million pieces.”

TB grunted. “Individual threats are taken out through executions and assassinations. Bombs are for making statements. Jewel thieves don’t inspire that sort of violence.”

“Exactly,” Haskell agreed. “So as well as knowing that Cerberus was not behind this particular bomb, there’s only one group of people that I can think of that would go to such extreme lengths to remove a single person in such spectacular fashion. Not only are they willing to do it, but it’s typical for them to copy other criminals’ signatures in order to divert suspicion.”

“And who would that be?” Waters asked.

Again, Nemo watched Haskell flash a look at Cherry .

“She’s referring to the Salieri.” The voice was Cherry’s.

All the men stared at her in shock. TB’s other half had been stalked and taken by a man from her past, a drug dealer named Gendry. His intent had been to traffic her in revenge for her running away from him years earlier. When TB and Midas had tag-teamed his interrogation, Gendry had given up the name “Salieri” just before TB ended his miserable life.

Waters fixed their handler with a stern look. “What have you been hiding, Cherry?”

She blew out a breath before answering. “The Salieri make sense as our bombers if the bomb was meant for me.”