“Not as bad as a few years back,” says Emil, their driver. “That was wh—”
“Shut up,” snaps Khadse. “And watch for the other team!”
Silence. Some uncomfortable shifting.
Khadse shivers again as they sit in the idling auto, but not due to the cold: he knows what’s waiting for him at the coal warehouse tonight. Just like his coat and shoes—the ones he wore to the Komayd job, and the ones he’s wearing now—the coal warehouse has its own strange, specific instructions.
He still remembers his bafflement the first time his employer arranged an “exchange.” In his day if someone wanted to pass along information, Khadse would just arrange a dead drop, or a precisely timed, fleeting encounter somewhere public. But his employer, of course, was different. Khadse was sent a small silver knife, and an old wooden matchbox filled with matches that had yellow heads. With these came instructions to take the items to a certain room in a certain warehouse, utilizing the utmost precaution in doing so, and then he was to…
Khadse shivers again at the very thought of it. Will tonight be the last time I do this? Or will I be doing this for the rest of my life—however long it lasts?
Finally the second auto arrives. They watch as it pulls up to the alley exit across the street from them. The lights blink on, then off.
“Site’s clear,” says Emil. “Proceed?”
Khadse nods. Emil puts the car in drive, pulls out, and starts off toward the eastern end of Ahanashtan, taking a predetermined series of alleys, back roads, and, once, cutting across a vacant lot.
The old coal warehouse emerges from the fog. It looks like some ancient, spectral castle, and reminds him of the ruins he saw when he was stationed in Bulikov, long ago, fragments of a civilization long since faded.
They park. He sits in silence, surveying the area.
“Matrusk’s been here all day,” says Zdenic. “No one’s come in or out or even close.”
“If this fucker didn’t have the strangest damned exchange system in all the world,” mutters Khadse, “this wouldn’t be an issue.” He grunts to himself. “The hells with it. Let’s go.”
He steps out of the auto. There’s a symphony of clunks as the rest of his team does the same, their auto doors opening all at once. He approaches the warehouse, walking with the air of a man coming to collect a debt, his dark coat fluttering, his wood-soled shoes clicking and clacking against the asphalt.
His crew follows him. Stupid to have so many for just a dead drop, but his employer did say to use the utmost precaution. He’s never liked how his employer is so paranoid, making requests as if they’re being watched all the time. It does give one ideas.
When they near the entry he makes a motion with his hand. His team members pull out pistols and begin moving ahead, sweeping from room to room. Khadse knows which room matters, the one at the very top, where the site manager’s office once was. A long way up.
They enter the warehouse bays. The rooms are huge and looming, giant seas of shadows. Khadse’s team switches on torches and sweeps the rooms with light, revealing giant concrete walls and ceilings, some corners awash in piles of coal and coke.
The torchlights dance over the piles of coal. Such filthy work, thinks Khadse.
No one. Nothing.
“Clear,” says Zdenic.
They leave two guards at the entrance, then proceed up the rickety wooden stairs to the next floor. They cross the entirety of the warehouse, then go up a winding metal staircase to the third floor. Everything is dark and dank, sooty and ashen, as if this place was built of the jetsam from some horrific fire.
Up to the fourth. They leave three more guards behind on the third, making it just Zdenic, Alzbeta, and Khadse on the fourth floor, where the site manager’s office awaits.
They walk down the hallway, then through the offices to the break rooms, where a sink must have burst long ago, leaving plumes of mold running across the walls and floor. They turn and approach the office at the very, very back. Khadse makes a gesture, and his two remaining team members take up positions: Zdenic at the site manager’s door, and Alzbeta at the hall entry.
“Won’t be a minute,” says Khadse. Then he opens the site manager’s door and walks in.
He turns on his own torch, sending shadows dancing around him. The room is drab and empty, its walls and floors tattooed with scars and scrapes, impressions of absent objects that once spent years here.
Grimacing, Khadse turns off his torch. Darkness swallows him. He fumbles in his pocket, takes out the matchbox containing the match with the yellow head. He places the match head on the sandpaper bit, and strikes it….
A low blue flame blossoms in the dark. Khadse wrinkles his nose at it. It is not a natural flame, not one that a normal match should make. It casts light, certainly, but its light somehow seems to make the shadows harder, more concrete, rather than dispersing them. He’s never seen a light that made a room feel darker—and yet this is exactly what he feels this match does, even in such a dark room.
He blows out the match. Waits. Then he flicks back on his torch.
He looks down. “Hells,” he mutters. “Here I am again.”
At his feet, on the floor, is a perfect circle of total darkness that was definitely not there before.
Khadse wrinkles his nose again, sighs, and pulls out the silver knife. “Well. Let’s get to it.”
In the darkness, Sigrud begins to move.
He keeps his lips clamped around the steel tube running up through the six inches of coal covering his form, taking deep breaths before he starts to shift the coal off of him. He picked particularly dusty coal, small particulates, so it creates little more than a soft hush as he rises.
He removes the tube and the cloth from his face, and blinks. He’s been lying hidden in the coal for nearly twenty hours now, having sat totally still as Khadse’s team searched the warehouse. His head is light with hunger, his crotch damp with urine—unfortunate, but a necessity. He swallows, shakes himself, and goes over what he heard.
Two at the bay door. Six more upstairs. Probably guarding the stairs. Eight total, then, including Khadse.
He listens closely, hears a quiet cough from the bay door around the corner. He slinks off the coal pile and creeps to the edge of the wall. His entire form is shrouded in black and his boots are wrapped in cloth, masking the sounds of their soles against the concrete. He darts his head out and back.
Two, yes. Both with pistols and torches.
Sigrud picks up his handheld radio, turns it on, checks the frequency. He readies himself—bolt-shot at his belt, knife on his thigh—holds up one finger, and taps the receiver, hard.
Three bays over, the radio’s mate—which is turned up very, very loud—makes a sharp tok sound, which echoes through the darkness.
“What in hells was that?” says one of the guards.
A long silence.
“Maybe some coal fell,” says the other. “Or rats, probably.”
More silence.
“Khadse would want us to check it out,” says the first guard.
“He also wouldn’t want us to leave the door unguarded. If you want to go look at your damned rats, I’ll stay here.”
“Fine.”
Footfalls. Not heavy. Light. A small man?
The guard rounds the corner, his torchlight bobbing ahead. He doesn’t see Sigrud standing in the shadows. The man is small, maybe five and a half feet. Sigrud takes full measure of him, estimating the way his body will move. Then he slinks after the guard, slipping through the darkness to hide behind the walls of the second coal bay.