Chapter Three The limousine slowed to a halt in front of the door of an imposing, three-story brick home. The driver climbed out and opened the door, allowing Paul to exit. Two bodyguards also stepped out of the car; the first opened the door for him to enter the house, the second followed behind him. Paul handed his overcoat and umbrella to a waiting employee and nodded at several others as he made his way along a hallway. His footsteps were silent on the plush carpet. After several turns down several corridors, he approached a door and entered a room. The room, which resembled a combination sitting room and study, was lavishly furnished in a classical French style, modernized only by the addition of several computer terminals scattered in various locations. Normally, the room would be brightly lit by natural light flooding in from the large windows overlooking the lush garden. This time, however, the light was diffused, filtered through the rain outside. Madeline sat near the windows, typing on a computer that rested atop a delicate antique desk. The soft light from the windows bathed her features, accentuating her look of concentration as she engaged in her work. Noticing him enter, she smiled warmly, stood, and walked over to him. "Welcome back." She kissed him lightly on the cheek. Grinning, he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close. "That's all I get? A peck on the cheek after two weeks away?" To his dismay, she pulled away from him. He frowned, but then saw her expression. There was something wrong. "Sit down," she said, walking over to a pair of chairs. Worried, he obeyed. She took the seat next to him and turned to him with a look of sympathetic concern. "The August 12 Group has kidnapped Walter. It's retaliation for what they believe was Section One's attack on them." His heart sank. He had always had a weak spot for Walter. Perhaps it was because Walter was the only person left whose recruitment to Section One had predated his, or because, after all of those years, Walter's essential character had never changed. "We have to get him back," Paul declared. "I'm about to use an intermediary to leak his location to Section One. They can mount a rescue. There's no need for us to get involved directly." "That's not good enough," he said, shaking his head. "I don't trust Section One to do anything competently these days. They might get him killed." "If we launch a rescue mission, it could reveal our existence. Nikita is already trying to figure out what our organization is. Intervening on behalf of Walter might be enough of a hint for her to put everything together." "I don�t care. Walter's been kidnapped in retaliation for one of our missions. We've got an obligation to help him." Madeline looked at him quietly, and then looked away. He knew her well enough to recognize that she would accede to his demand -- even against her better judgment. Without a word to Paul, she picked up her telephone and pressed a speed-dial button. "David? I have a job for you." ****** Quinn closed the door of the empty office behind her as quickly as possible, hoping that no one had seen her enter. As the head of Comm, without an office of her own, she found it difficult to locate a reliable place from which she could place a private phone call. She had resorted to sneaking into the offices of other Level 5 operatives when they were off duty. As it turned out, this had an important advantage -- as a recent cost-cutting measure, surveillance in those offices was automatically shut off when their occupants were not on the premises. Before placing the call, she paused a moment to take a deep breath to calm herself. Her prior contacts with Oversight had been regarding minor matters -- in truth, they had simply been attempts to ingratiate herself with the head of Oversight and let him know she was a cooperative source of information. Her ploy had worked: she had been rewarded with the number for his direct line along with an invitation to call him if anything important came up. Now, finally, something had. She knew that Operations had not yet contacted Oversight to explain the 12-hour suspension of missions. By beating Operations to it, she could further establish herself with Oversight as a valuable resource. But more than that was at stake. She hoped that Oversight would share her disagreement with Operations' decision. If so, this could be the first step toward her ultimate goal: Operations' removal from office and Quinn's promotion to take her place. Quinn dialed. And waited. "Yes?" "This is Quinn at Section One. I have some information that you might be interested in." "What is it?" "Operations has placed all pending missions on hold for the next 12 hours." "I saw that. What�s the reason?" "The August 12 Group has kidnapped one of Section's retirees. The former munitions specialist, Walter. Operations wants to put all of our resources into a rescue attempt." "That's very wasteful." "Yes, I thought so, too. I raised a formal objection, but she ignored me." "Do you know when the rescue mission will begin?" "No. We haven�t even located him yet." "I see. Contact me again as soon as you learn anything more substantial." "You�re not going to intervene?" "No. But if this rescue mission causes problems, Operations will be disciplined. Severely." ****** Nikita paced back and forth in the Perch nervously. Initially, she had stayed in Comm, wanting to be as close to the search process as possible. But after several hours, the repeated backwards glances from Jason, Quinn, and the other operatives working feverishly at their computers made it clear to her that her presence was a distraction. So she had retreated upstairs to watch them through her plate-glass window. She was too consumed with worry to get any other work done. If Walter were killed, it would be entirely her fault: her fault for instituting the new retirement policy in the first place, for failing to provide adequate security for the retirees, and for apparently allowing the location of the retirees to leak to their enemies. By trying to do the right thing for Walter, she had actually hurt him. I just can't win, she thought. Everything I do to try to humanize this place just blows up in my face. What made things worse was the sheer irony of the situation. The August 12 Group had kidnapped Walter in retaliation for something Section One hadn't even done. Not that Nikita could have explained that to the Group's leader. She could just imagine how it would have sounded: We're the most covert anti-terrorist organization on the planet, but, ah, someone else got to you instead. Um, no, we don't know who. And no, we don't know why. Have they been responsible for taking out almost all of our targets during the past five months? Why, yes. But we still haven't figured out the first thing about them. The Group's leader would have laughed in her face, and she wouldn't have blamed him. It sounded too ludicrous to be true. A flurry of activity down below caught her eye. Operatives stopped what they were doing and rushed to gather around Jason's terminal. "Operations?" Quinn's voice queried over her intercom. "Do you have something?" "Jason has identified the location of the broadcast." "Whose team is closest?" "Jasmine's." "Anyone else nearby?" "Byron." "Tell Jasmine to go, and Byron to stand by as backup." "Yes, ma'am. However, it's been nine hours since the broadcast. It's quite possible they've moved him by now." "I understand that. But we don't have any other options. We're going ahead." ****** "Matt, you're such an idiot," Karl said. "I told you not to buy your stuff from him. He rips everybody off." "But he's the only one who lets me buy on credit," the guard protested. Walter rolled his eyes in frustration. Those two had been discussing their drug habit -- in excruciating detail -- for hours. Listening to them was more torture than the ropes digging into his wrists and ankles. "Yeah, and how much extra does he charge you for that? Look, I know this guy who's friends with my cousin, and he can set you up with --" Karl cut his advice short as a popping sound echoed from upstairs. He and the guard pulled out their guns. Before they could move, several masked men kicked down the door and fired automatic weapons, killing both of them in seconds. Walter looked up at the men in dazed relief as they climbed down the stairs toward him. Section One had saved him after all. One of the men knelt down and started untying him from the chair. Another spoke into a communications device. "We've swept each room, and the hostiles are all neutralized. Yes, we've got him." As the ropes around him loosened and the blood rushed back into his limbs, Walter felt a bit lightheaded. Then he felt a sharp pain in his neck. He turned in surprise to see that the man who had untied him was holding a syringe. He was about to curse the man when his head felt heavy. Quickly, blackness enveloped him. ****** Nikita stood stiffly in Comm, watching over Quinn's shoulder and listening as Jasmine's team reported. "Checking the perimeter. All clear." Minutes passed in silence. "We're inside. There seem to be ... a lot of dead bodies. They've all been shot." "Elaborate," Quinn ordered. "Someone shot up the place. We've counted eleven corpses. It happened recently, too." "And Walter?" Nikita asked. "Negative. He's not here. Neither is the man who spoke to you on the video broadcast." Nikita tore off her comm. unit in frustration. Ignoring Quinn's smug expression, Nikita started marching toward the steps leading up to the Perch. Quinn had been right. The August 12 Group had moved Walter after all. They would never be able to reach him. The knowledge of what would now happen to him ate at her, her guilt manifesting as an acid taste in her mouth. There was something odd, however. What would explain all of the dead bodies? Nikita stopped in her tracks, realizing the answer: a raid by another organization, of course. The August 12 Group hadn't moved Walter at all. Instead, Section's mysterious rival had him. ****** The aroma of the coffee started to revive Paul even before the drink hit his lips. His jetlag was only now starting to pass, several days after his return home. This was the first day he had been able to wake up early enough for their regular breakfast meeting. For several days before, Madeline had allowed him to sleep in. He picked apart a muffin as he listened to her summarize the latest budget projections. Even after all this time working under the new arrangement, it still felt a little strange to be so far out of the loop regarding the activities of their organization. As Executive Director, Madeline exercised complete control of all of their operations. Not that he wasn't happy to leave it to her. Indeed, he found the hierarchy that she had created so dizzyingly complicated that he didn't even want to try to follow it. But it left him with a very different type of role to play: the outside face of their organization. As Chairman, he was their fundraiser and liaison to outside allies. Together, Paul and Madeline set overall policy, but Madeline alone decided how to implement it. When they first decided upon this division of labor, he had made a joke about it. Something about him bringing home the bacon, and her cooking it. To say that she hadn't appreciated the analogy was an extreme understatement. It still amused him, however; thinking about it again, he had to stifle a smile. She finished her report and leaned back in her chair, waiting for questions. "It sounds like you have things well under control," he said. "As usual." She nodded in thanks and poured herself some more tea. Setting the pot back down, she looked back toward him. "According to the doctors, Walter is fully recovered now." "That didn't take long," he said, slightly surprised. "No. He hadn't been injured very badly. Mostly superficial bruises." She poured cream in her tea and stirred it carefully. "Section One is still looking for him, you know. We can't keep him any longer." Paul shook his head. "He's still a target. He needs protection." "We can't provide it. We can't afford to be exposed." Paul frowned. Of course, she was right. But he didn't like their options. "We can't deliver him to Section. Our teams can't be allowed anywhere near the place." "Of course not." "And we can't just let him loose and hope that he makes his way back there safely. He'll never make it." "I'm not suggesting that we do that." "Well, what then?" "We'll deliver him to someone who can protect him," she answered, smiling mysteriously. ****** Walter awoke to bumps and jolts. He was lying on his back, and realized from the vibrations beneath him that he was in a moving vehicle. He opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor in the rear of a windowless van. Two men in ski masks -- one brown, one red -- sat on a bench next to him; a partition hid the rest of the vehicle. "Are we headed back to Section?" Walter asked. The man in the red ski mask turned toward him, green eyes glittering through the eyeholes. "We're not Section," the man said, his voice colored with a faint, unidentifiable accent. Walter felt suddenly cold. "Don't worry, we're not going to hurt you," the man in the brown ski mask said. This one sounded American. "Who are you people? And what are you going to do with me?" Walter asked. "We are ECRC," Red Ski Mask answered cryptically. "What the hell does that mean?" "Eduardo Campos Revolutionary Committee," Brown Ski Mask explained. "We're rivals of the August 12 Group." "Gee, that explains everything," Walter said sarcastically. Brown Ski Mask laughed. He seemed almost friendly. "The August 12 Group is the band of counter-revolutionary scum that kidnapped you. We rescued you because we didn't want their actions to hurt our cause." "What cause?" "Freeing the world from the shackles of digital tyranny," Red Ski Mask opined, somehow managing to sound both pompous and crazed at the same time. Walter rolled his eyes involuntarily. Whatever these two were on, it was some powerful stuff. Brown Ski Mask looked at him. "Eduardo Campos was a writer who opposed the growing dependence of the world on computers. He believed this dependence would eventually take away our freedom, our privacy, and even our individuality. He was martyred by the fascist police during a protest in Los Angeles on August 12, 1995. Since then, he's been the inspiration for several political groups that are trying to keep his legacy alive. We're one; the August 12 Group is another. But we restrict our direct action to the destruction of property. The August 12 Group kills people." "It looked to me like you killed some people when you came to take me," Walter interjected. "We kill our enemies, like any army. But ordinary people aren't the enemy," Red Ski Mask replied. "So why take me?" The two men looked at each other. Brown Ski Mask answered. "The August 12 Group is starting a war with Section One. We wanted to make sure that Section One doesn�t lump all Campos followers together. We don't want to be caught in any war. So we decided to do Section One a favor. One we hope they�ll remember." They drove on in silence for another half hour. He felt the vehicle slow, then stop. Brown Ski Mask stood up and swung open the rear door. "This is where you get out," the man informed him. Walter looked outside, squinting a bit at the bright sunlight. The van had stopped in front of a surburban townhouse with a neatly manicured lawn. He slowly began to climb out the door. Brown Ski Mask gripped his arm to help him out. As he did so, he uttered a warning. "You're still in danger. And so are they," he said, gesturing toward the house. "But we can't help you any more. Now go!" The doors slammed shut and the van roared away, tires squealing. Sighing, he walked toward the house and mounted the front steps. He rang the bell and waited. The sound of steps approached the door from inside, and then the door opened. Walter's eyes widened in shock. Standing before him was Michael Samuelle. ****** Barry sat on the couch, staring at the television in a stupor. The laser gun sound effects of the cartoon he had on drilled into his head, aggravating his already hideously sharp headache. But he was too morose to switch the program off. Once again, Section One had defeated him. Eleven comrades dead, an entire safe house shot to pieces, and his hostage stolen away. This was war. There was nothing further to negotiate. Now it was time for vengeance. Barry read Karl's list of former Section One operatives once more. Section had been recalling all of them since Walter's kidnapping, bringing them back to safety before Barry could reach them. All except one. This one Barry intended to kill. ****** Hours had passed, and Walter was tired. He sat at Michael's kitchen table, drinking his third cup of coffee. After sending Adam to his room, Michael had listened carefully as Walter recounted recent events. Through it all, Michael's expression had remained impassive. Walter might as well have been giving him the latest sports scores. Walter looked around the kitchen in curiosity. The countertops were spotless, brimming with a multitude of appliances. He wondered how Michael could have adjusted to such an ordinary existence. "So Section is at war," Michael said flatly. "That's what it looks like. Although it turns out we have some unlikely allies." "ECRC." "Yeah. I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd be helped out by some terrorists." "Things may not be what they seem," Michael said softly. Walter frowned, trying to make sense out of Michael�s statement. Michael was just as baffling as ever. Why couldn't he just come out and say what he meant? Even after all this time out of Section, the man hadn't de-Sectionized. Walter felt sorry for Adam, having to live with an enigma for a father. But in the very next moment, Walter felt a pang of guilt for thinking this. After all that Michael had gone through, who the hell was he to criticize? No matter how cold and unfeeling Michael seemed, he had always done the right thing. He had protected Nikita too many times to count and -- even more admirable -- had taken responsibility for Adam. All that after surviving every dehumanizing tactic Section's former masters could dream up. The guy deserved a break. There was only one thing about Michael that had really disappointed Walter. Despite Walter's fervent hopes, Michael had never rebelled, had never seized control of Section. Surely it had been obvious to Michael that Oversight would have supported him, as would the rank and file. Even -- no, especially -- Operations and Madeline had recognized how easy it would have been. So why hadn't he? Walter pondered this question for a few moments. Perhaps Michael feared that exercising such power would destroy his soul. Life as Operations wasn�t really living, so much as a living hell. Maybe Michael knew what he was doing after all. ****** Quinn stood in the darkness of the unoccupied office and furtively dialed the telephone. Oversight would not be pleased with Operations, Quinn thought, smiling to herself. Not pleased at all. "Yes?" "This is Quinn again. I have an update." "Go ahead." "We managed to trace the location where Walter was being held. Operations launched a rescue mission, but we didn't find him. It appears that they moved him before we could get there. So it was a total waste -- we delayed critical missions around the world for a full ten hours for nothing." "Very unfortunate. And Operations still hasn't bothered to inform me of the reason for the delays. If it weren't for you, Quinn, I'd be totally in the dark." "Well, we wouldn't want that." "I'm quite pleased with your work, you know. Oversight appreciates operatives who help it fulfill its supervisory responsibilities." "I'm really just doing my duty, sir." "Well, keep it up. I think you'll find that attention to duty is amply rewarded." ****** Walter's arrival at Michael's home was deeply troubling to Michael. It meant that not only were he and his son currently in danger, but that his efforts to hide his identity and find a safe location had been in vain. Had his skills as an operative declined so badly in just two years on the outside? Or had he been betrayed? Unfortunately, that seemed the most likely explanation. How else would a terrorist group -- and a relatively obscure one at that -- have been able to find both Walter and Michael? Section's security must not be what it used to be. In any event, the warning given to Walter by his 'rescuers' had to be taken seriously. The August 12 Group would be on its way. "We need to leave," Michael said. "Yeah, obviously. But where do we go?" "We return to Section One." "But we can't do that. It's not safe for you to leave Adam behind." "I intend to take Adam with us." Walter stared at Michael, clearly stunned. "If he sees Section . . . ." "I know," Michael said. There was nothing more to say. Adam's life as an innocent would be over; he would never leave Section One. But there was no other choice. No place but Section would be safe enough. But Adam's fate was not the only reason for his concern. The very thought of Section One filled him with dread. Not the old Section One -- that had been, in its own, bizarre way, his only home. He often missed it. Even dreamed about it. But the new, changed Section -- Nikita's Section -- that he did not want to see. Ever. He knew that Nikita could not have lasted this long as Operations without becoming ruthless, hardened. He also knew that seeing her that way would kill something inside of him. So he made a decision. Nikita was dead. She had been dead ever since the abeyance mission where he had tried to save her so many years ago. The woman who returned six months later, who had lied to and manipulated him for years afterwards, that was someone else. That woman he could call Operations, could even obey without his heart breaking. And he would have to -- Adam's life depended on it. ****** Barry listened to the birds chirping merrily as dawn broke in the quiet neighborhood where he had been waiting, patiently, overnight. He stretched, looked once more at his target through his binoculars, and turned to the comrade sitting in the driver�s seat next to him. "It's time." He stepped out of the car and closed the door quietly. Readying his weapon, he signaled to the others surrounding the house. He smiled to himself. Soon, Section One's ex-finest would be lying in a pool of blood. Barry reached instinctively for the knife sheathed by his side. That he would use to chop off a souvenir finger to be sent -- special delivery -- to Section One's Operations. ****** Walter had slept fitfully. The couch was too short for him to stretch out completely, and so he spent the night turning from side to side to keep his legs from getting stiff. Shifting again, he saw something strange out of the corner of his eye: a shadow, passing by the window. With a burst of adrenaline, he threw off his blanket, reached for his gun on the coffee table, and slipped off the couch to kneel on the floor. Frozen, he fixed his eyes on the front door. With a spray of bullets, the door flew open. A figure jumped inside, but before Walter could even fire off a single shot the man spun around, hit the wall and then slumped to the floor. Looking toward the hallway, Walter saw the reason. Michael stood there, gun in hand, pumping shots at their attackers. Walter ran over to the window. Peering out, he saw men running around toward the side of the house, heading for the rear door. "Michael! Watch your back!" Michael spun around and fired three more shots. He then disappeared back down the hallway, from where Walter heard more shooting, and then silence. Michael reappeared in the hallway, with Adam hiding behind him. "Let's go," Michael said.