Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 017

The Boss looked Soren up and down with the practiced appraisal of a man who had spent years sorting people into categories: threat, mark, or irrelevant. The young man at his stall fit none of them cleanly. He was speaking Mandarin, which in this part of the Frontier Republic was not unusual. The border with the mainland ran close, and the city had absorbed enough of its northern neighbor's population over the decades that Mandarin was as common on these streets as the local tongue. Mainlanders came to work, to trade, to disappear. They came with money, sometimes, and occasionally with more money than they were careful about.

The Boss stood up from his chair with the enthusiasm of a man who had just revised his morning upward.

"My friend, take your time, take your time. Everything here is fresh, and our scale is the most honest on the street. Ask anyone." He gestured broadly at the stall with the pride of a man who had never weighed anything accurately in his life. "What are you looking for?"

"Something that's actually dried," Soren said, turning over another piece of fish with mild skepticism. "Everything out here feels damp."

"The good stock is in the back. Come, come, I'll show you."

He pushed open the door to the rear courtyard and waved Soren through with the generous hospitality of a man who was already calculating the markup. Soren stepped inside, and as he passed the threshold, he reached back and pulled the door shut behind him.

The Boss didn't notice. He was already talking, moving toward the storage shelves along the far wall, extolling the quality of his inventory with the practiced fluency of someone who had been doing this for years and no longer needed to think about it. It was only when the silence behind him stretched past the point where a customer should have responded that he stopped and turned.

The door was closed.

The young man was not looking at the shelves.

"You're not here to buy anything," the Boss said. It was not quite a question.

His hand moved automatically toward the back of his waistband, found nothing, and the memory surfaced a half-second later: he'd handed the pistol to his man twenty minutes ago. The Boss had a brief, unpleasant conversation with his own judgment, and then Soren drew the Beretta 92F and the conversation ended.

The sweat came fast. The Boss raised both hands to about chest height, not fully surrendered, not quite defiant, just occupying the uncertain middle ground of a man buying time while he thought.

Soren didn't give him much of it. He gestured with the muzzle: face the wall, hands where I can see them. The Boss complied, and Soren checked the back room in two seconds flat, lifting the curtain on the doorway to find a woman asleep on the bed, undisturbed, and then confirmed the kitchen and the storage room were empty. He came back and stood beside the Boss, close enough that there was no question about the geometry of the situation.

"You said you were here for money," the Boss said, to the wall. "So let's talk about money."

"Twenty thousand dollars," Soren said. "Do you have it?"

"Twenty thousand." The Boss let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "I don't keep that kind of cash on hand. And I don't have dollars. I have local currency and some renminbi. Converted, maybe thirteen or fourteen thousand. I could add some gold on top of that, but twenty thousand is not a number I can hit."

His voice had the careful, measured quality of a man who was speaking slowly on purpose. Soren recognized the rhythm. He was stalling, waiting for something, probably the return of the man he'd sent down the street with his g*n.

Soren took out his phone, unlocked it, and held the screen in front of the Boss's face.

The live video feed showed a rooftop across the street. A rifle rested on a folded jacket at the parapet's edge, its scope aimed at the rear courtyard. The crosshairs were not moving.

The Boss stared at it for a long moment.

"You brought a sniper," he said, in the tone of a man confronting an outcome that felt disproportionate to his own importance in the world.

"The same number," Soren said. "Twenty thousand. Short by a dollar, I take a finger. I work through the hand before I move to the feet."

He c****d the hammer.

Whatever resistance the Boss had been conserving dissolved completely. His shoulders dropped, his breathing changed, and he turned from the wall with the expression of a man who had made a calculation and arrived at survival. "I have it. I have it. Just... follow me."

He led Soren into the back room, moving carefully around the sleeping woman without waking her, and crossed to the bookcase against the far wall. He reached behind the second shelf and pressed something, and a section of the back panel swung inward to reveal a hidden compartment. Inside was a briefcase.

He set it on the desk and opened it.

The stacks of red hundred-yuan notes were arranged with the neat, self-satisfied precision of a man who took pride in his savings. There were a great many of them.

"Roughly two hundred thousand renminbi," the Boss said quietly. "Converts to a little over twenty thousand dollars. That's everything in there."

From the bed, a drowsy voice: "Honey? What are you doing?"

The Boss went pale. He looked at Soren.

Soren had already pocketed the Beretta. He was smiling, the easy, untroubled smile of someone who had stopped by to help with an errand. "Morning. Just here to pick something up for your husband. Sorry to disturb you."

"Oh." The woman pulled the blanket up and closed her eyes again. "Don't be too long."

"Of course not." Soren looked at the Boss. "Shall we?"

"Yes," the Boss said, in a voice that had lost most of its air. "Yes, let's."

________________________________________

They walked out through the shop together, the Boss carrying the briefcase until they reached the front step, where he transferred it to Soren's hand with the resigned finality of a man completing a transaction he hadn't agreed to. Three of his men were coming back up the street, returning from whatever errand he'd sent them on. They stopped when they saw him, reading the scene without being able to interpret it, their faces cycling through confusion.

Soren didn't wait for them to find a question. He walked past them and into the morning crowd, the briefcase at his side, and was gone before anyone had decided what to do about it.

Behind him, the Boss stood at the door of his shop and did not move, and did not speak, and kept his eyes carefully away from the rooftop across the street.

________________________________________

"We're clear. Meet at the docks."

Soren said it quietly, moving at a steady pace through the foot traffic near the waterfront, and by the time he reached the rendezvous point Mike had already arrived, the Springfield M1903 wrapped in cloth and tucked under one arm, his expression composed and unsurprised.

Evan and Howard appeared a few minutes later. Father George Whitman was with them, awake and ambulatory, wearing the expression of a man who had endured a great deal and was reserving judgment on the people responsible.

"The ship leaves at ten tonight," Mike said. "But you'll need to board before the port patrol makes its evening pass. I'd say be on the water by eight."

"We'll be ready," Soren said.

Evan was already scanning the dockside vendors. "Howard mentioned some of these cargo runs don't carry food. A week at sea with nothing to eat is going to be a problem."

"Go," Soren said. "Dry provisions and fresh water. Enough for a week, with margin."

Evan and Howard moved off toward the nearest stall without further discussion.

Soren turned to Father George, who had been waiting with the patient, slightly martyred composure of a man who had decided to conduct himself with dignity regardless of the circumstances.

"Father. I'm sorry about your church." He said it without preface and without softening it, because it didn't deserve either. "And I'm sorry about last night. You didn't ask for any of it. Once we're on board, Mike will take you to the consulate. The Blakes won't touch a foreign national with official attention on him. You'll be safe."

Father George looked at him for a moment. Then he let out the long, quiet sigh of a man setting something down that he'd been carrying for a while. "Mr. Ashcroft. I don't hold last night against you. Any of you. People in desperate circumstances do desperate things, and most of them are just trying to find their way." He folded his hands. "I don't want compensation for the building. Buildings can be rebuilt. I only ask that you keep your word and let me go."

"You have it," Soren said.

Father George nodded, and said nothing more, and looked out at the harbor with the expression of a man who had made his peace and was waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

Soren turned to Mike.

"The consulate car is already in the city," Mike said. "They'll be here within the hour." He paused, then added, with the matter-of-fact tone of a man who had thought this through and arrived at a conclusion he was comfortable with: "You did what you needed to do. I don't regret the night."

"Neither do I," Soren said.

Evan and Howard came back at a jog, arms full, slightly out of breath, Evan wearing the expression of a man who had enjoyed the errand more than the situation warranted. The four of them stood together at the edge of the dock for a moment, the harbor stretching out ahead, the morning light flat and grey on the water.

Mike extended a hand. Soren shook it.

"Take care of yourself," Mike said.

"You too."

Noah and Mike said their goodbyes to Evan with the warmth of people who had known each other a long time and were not sure when they would see each other again, which was the honest version of most goodbyes. Then the three of them turned toward the water, and the Frontier Republic fell away behind them with each step they took toward the pier.

The ship was waiting. The Sunvale Republic was a week away.

It was enough to be moving forward.