“Mr. Singkham, while I appreciate the faith you have in me ... with all due respect,” I blurt out, “you can’t be serious.” It’s Monday morning. Eight a.m. Way too early for this shit.
I’m gripping the edges of the armchair while he leans toward me across his desk, his black eyes hungry. “You’re the only one who can get close enough to Taranis to discover if his treason is a new development or if he’s been acting against COE interests this whole time. We need to know how deep the treachery goes.”
“As aspy?”
“Youarepretty equipped for it.”
I glance at the pink monster sitting in the armchair beside me, looking interested but otherwise entirely unsurprised.
After discovering that compromising audio my backup camera had caught, I turned my recording over to Mr. Singkham directly. He cautioned me not to divulge its contents to the SDD, and we didn’t get another chance to talk about it, given that I spent the next three days in and out of SDD debriefs and COE medical consults. I was fine. SDD was pissed and Mr. Singkham was nervous. I knew why. Ms. Lemon was a terrifying woman, and I had a funny feeling that if she found outMr. Singkham’s best and longest-standing Champion had been passing notes to the other side this entire time, it’d be Mr. Singkham’s head.
My SDD meetings done and dusted, Mr. Singkham called me into his office at my first availability Monday morning. Today. He also surprised me by calling the Wyvern in to join us. Immediately after Mr. Singkham showed the Wyvern my recording, I’d expected the monster male to express outrage or shock. Instead, he’d simply stuck out his bottom lip, nodded along, and said, “That tracks.”
In response to his insinuation that I’d make a good spy, I turn toward the Wyvern and give him my best incredulous stare. He ignores me and huffs smoke out of his nostrils while he examines his claws, one ankle hooked casually over the opposite knee. “I don’t like the way Emily’s guy buffs these. I like when they’re shinier.”
“How can you be so cool about all this?” My voice cracks open like a skull slammed against pavement—i.e.,myskull, after Taranis realizes immediately that I’m spying on him. “I can’t spy on Taranis! You’ve met the guy, right?”
“We’ve all met the male—” Mr. Singkham starts, but I shake my head.
“No. I mean, have youreallyseen him. Not Taranis, but therealhim?”
Mr. Singkham quiets. He sits back in his chair and pulls his kerchief out of his breast pocket. Another Thai design. Even though he’s been in the States twenty-plus years, he’s still so proud of his heritage. I admire that in a way that makes me nostalgic about my past. My mom calls me her American daughter every time she speaks to me on the phone, and even my dad, who is German born and raised but whose parents are Malian, has taken to speaking to me in English. Seeing Mr. Singkham now makes me excited to be attending the Jinju Lantern Festival as an honored guest, not as a working photographer—though, on second thought, I’m filled with dread at who I’m taking as mydate. The murderer stuffed into superstar shape and whom I’m now being asked to spy on.
Purposefully evading my gaze, Mr. Singkham mops his forehead with his patterned kerchief and mutters unsteadily, “He hassometrouble retaining staff ...”
I balk. “Sometrouble? Did you not hear what I told you? He let his laststaffget eaten alive by rats! I woulda been dead right there on the tracks with them if I’d been sixty seconds slower!”
Mr. Singkham spares me my next explosion by not trying to contradict me. We all know I’m right. We all know that Taranis is—deep down in his bleak interior—a rotten thing. “I’m not suggesting you put yourself in danger, Ms. Neumann. I’m only suggesting that should you have another occasion to record him, you take it, and that perhaps if he affords you any liberties he doesn’t afford his other staff members, you take the opportunity to snoop. He is one of the COE’s most valuable assets, and we need to be absolutely certain of his treachery, and its scope, before we take any action.”
I settle back into my seat. I didn’t realize how far forward I was leaning. “‘Snoop’?” My brows come down hard. My nails, still chipped from last Tuesday’s escapade, dig into the hard leather. It looks like it’s been patched with something, and I get the distinct impression that I’m not the first person to sit in this seat, wanting to tear apart Mr. Singkham like the Meinad did Taranis’s face.
That seems to perk the Wyvern up. He shifts, his big ass squeaking as he plants both feet back on the floor and leans forward on his elbows. “What are you looking for?”
Mr. Singkham wipes his forehead again. “I’ve watched the video many times, and I can come to only one conclusion as to what they might have been speaking about and bartering over.”
“Weapons,” the Wyvern answers, drawing a surprised look from Mr. Singkham. The Wyvern tilts his head. “I thought it was obvious, given what we know about the Marduk and his motivations. He’s been collecting weapons for years.”
Mr. Singkham loses his voice. He doesn’t speak. He only nods. “Our intelligence has told us that the Marduk’s weapons collection issubstantial. He was responsible for the raid on the SDD that took eight. Since then, our collection of nine has been reduced to four. I have ... asuspicion, one I’d like Ms. Neumann to help confirm, that Taranis might be responsible for having taken some of them.”
“How many does that leave you with?” the Wyvern asks, rubbing his jaw.
This conversation is so over my head my gaze can only ping-pong between the two. “Across SDD and COE safes, we now have only sixteen, though we have strong suspicion that at least eleven remain lost.”
“Fuck. That means the VNA could have as many as forty-two.”
Mr. Singkham nods.
My face screws up. “Forty-two?” I blurt out. “That can’t be right. That would mean there are seventy ... sixty-nine weapons total. Are there more than one weapon per person—being, whatever?”
Mr. Singkham and the Wyvern exchange a long look. A little tug-of-war takes place, which the Wyvern invariably wins when he says, “You want her in on this, you have to bring her in.”
Mr. Singkham sighs. “This information is deeply confidential, Ms. Neumann. If you share this with anyone, it could risk all of humanity.”
“Fuck that. Don’t tell me.” I shoot up out of my chair. “I already said I don’t want to be involved in any of this.”
The Wyvern sticks out his massive clawed foot when I try to pass by him between our chairs, blocking my exit.
I stick my pointer fingers in each of my ears. “Lalalalalala. I can’t hear you.”
