“Two hours until your car comes,” Samuel said from behind me, scrolling through his phone, legs stretched out on the bed.
I was staring down at the white solar-paneled roof of the Congress Center, hardly hearing him.
Samuel said, “This time tomorrow, you’ll be ordering Starbucks ventis.”
I turned back to him. The bruise on the side of his face had purpled, a reminder of Haroun’s strength, and despite the pleasure his words should have evoked, I just couldn’t picture myself in America. Not at Starbucks, and not at home with Laura and Rashid. It was a dream I’d held on to over the past ten days, something to keep me going, but now it wouldn’t come. Why?
I suspected it was because, unlike Haroun, I’d always only been an analyst. It was what I did. It gave my life meaning. But I’d been unable to analyze this situation to my satisfaction. There were too many loose ends. Too much chaos in the data.
I was sure the Germans were using Milo, but to what end? Weren’t they getting what they needed from him? He had revealed a globe-spanning secret army and had brought them to the convergence point of that conspiracy. He had handed them everything. Yet they were lying to him about the Massive Brigade. Why?
The door opened, and Sally and Mel filed in. I hadn’t seen Paul in a day, but I also hadn’t bothered to ask after him. I supposed his presence was no longer necessary, and so he’d been sent home. Samuel scrambled to his feet, but neither woman seemed to care if he was doing his job or not. Mel just ordered him to step outside, and he did so.
“Did you tell him?” I asked.
Sally nodded and settled on the desk chair. She, too, seemed deep in thought.
“And?”
“And he listened,” she said. “I suppose he’s adding it to his calculations.”
Mel settled on the corner of the bed. “We should be down there.”
Sally glared at her. “If there’s an international incident brewing, we are not taking part.”
“There isn’t,” I said, and they looked at me. “At least, Milo’s not planning one. He’ll want to get this done entirely under the radar.”
“He’s not the only player,” Sally said.
“Which is why we should—” Mel began, but Sally cut her off with:
“Enough, okay?”
The tension between them was distracting, and I didn’t want to be distracted. So I returned to the window. Why would the Germans peddle lies about the Massive Brigade right here in Davos? Why sell that to us and, presumably, to other intelligence agencies?
Along Talstrasse, just south of the park, I saw that sniper on his rooftop, keeping an eye on pedestrians. This was perhaps the most secure city in the world at that moment. What could really go wrong?
“Distraction,” I said aloud, and though I continued staring out the window I knew they had turned to me. “They’re distracting us from something.”
“From what?” asked Sally.
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t have an answer, and that was when I looked down at the Congress Center roof and realized it was empty. The two snipers I’d grown used to seeing down there, pacing with military regularity, were nowhere to be seen.
“What do the Germans want?” Mel asked behind me, but I was absorbed by the empty rooftop—where had they gone? When two figures emerged from the rooftop access door, I relaxed. Just late for their shift. They—
No. Not snipers. They wore red and blue hooded overcoats, and one carried a heavy duffel bag. They hurried around the solar panels to my end of the roof.
“To stick it to us,” Sally said, answering Mel. “That’s what they want.”
“But why?” Mel asked, sounding unsure. “What the fuck have we done to them?”
“You have to ask that?”
The two figures crouched at the edge of the roof, over the courtyard between our buildings, and opened the duffel bag. Together, they removed a dozen or so metal balls and what looked like an aerosol can. What were they—
“Oh, shit,” I said as the pieces came to me, the way a problem left to fester in the back of the mind will suddenly present its solution when the final piece is witnessed. And there I was, witnessing it.
“What?” I don’t know which of them said that.
“The Germans know you want to absorb Northwell,” I said. “And they can’t allow that.”
The figures were dropping the balls into the courtyard, where they poked holes in the snowbank. One of them—the one in blue—took something out of his pocket, extended an antenna from it, and pressed a button.
Boom-boom-boom-boom.
“What the fuck?” Mel said, standing.
Sally said nothing, but she was suddenly at my shoulder. Together we looked down at the courtyard, where the balls were exploding, spitting out streams of smoke that quickly began to fill the space between the hotel and the Congress Center.
As the blue-clad figure ran off to the access door, the one in red shook his aerosol can and, on one of the solar panels, raggedly scrawled two shapes in red spray paint: M3.