Freedom

Chapter 2

Listen carefully, 47. The Providence heralds who somehow found out about me and the infiltration to the Milton-Fitzpatrick Bank are all that's left to eliminate. Your friend Diana didn't consider that, when dismantling Providence from the inside, she'd also need to take care of the third-rate jerks lurking to get to the top of the pyramid. Grey warned me this would happen... I don't have the names of all involved, but I do know who's in charge of the special forces guarding my apartment. It's none other than an ex ICA agent, Mark Johnson. The justice crusade you carried out with your then handler left not only a bunch of Providence heralds adrift but also annihilated ICA's order, leaving dozens of active agents without communication with HQ in Chongqing and subsequently without handlers. Agent Johnson was recruited by a Camilla Decoteaux, director of Decoteaux & Gaubert Investment S.A., a hedge fund and one of Providence's assets in France. Decoteaux was in New York in a meeting with Athena Savalas just two days before her assassination. Both share not only in common the direction of a Providence financial asset, but also their sisterhood in the organization. Decoteaux must be one of the few Providence heralds still active.

Agent Johnson has a CICADA special forces team at his charge on constant watch not only in Karl-Marx-Straße in the Neukölln district where my apartment is, but also performing as Decoteaux's bodyguards. Because, 47, tomorrow first thing in the morning the French hedge fund director will set foot in Berlin for a meeting with Heiner Böhm, director of the counterpart LTCM Böhm A.G., located a little over two kilometers away from the Brandenburger Tor in the heart of Berlin.

Whether you want to take care of Decoteaux is at your complete discretion, 47. The priority is the external disk. I don't know how many CICADA agents are in Karl-Marx-Straße but, if you allow me the suggestion, proceed stealthily, it's a residential area after all. We talk when you've retrieved it. Good luck, 47.

As soon as he approached the address given by Olivia, he recognized the infiltrated agents around the building. They were CICADA, the same forces who neutralized Lucas. They were skillful and deadly on the open field, yet their camouflage skills in an urban and ordinary setting such as that of Karl-Marx-Straße in the Neukölln district of the German capital left a lot to be desired. Passersby went on with their normal lives that day past noon without noticing the strangely bulky workers of the garbage truck, the passersby mailmen and plumbers who suspiciously wandered one building in particular. A plumber?

He neared a kiosk and bought a newspaper. He took a seat on a nearby bench, looking directly at the building. A van with tinted windows and the logo of plumbing services was parked right before the main door and from it, two men wearing white overalls went out carrying toolboxes towards the entrance. He stood up and crossed the street. The never-ending buzzing of the traffic on wet asphalt created an ongoing curtain of noise in the background. Added to that was the small but unstoppable army of cyclists going in both directions. People going in and out of stores, clientele sitting on terraces drinking coffee sheltered from the rain under canvas roofs and the muttering of the crowd non-stopping chatting in a dozen different languages. As he attempted to cross the building threshold, the agents disguised as porters stopped his way and ordered him to turn around and leave. He obeyed without uttering a word as he quickly scanned the surroundings. Two porters, two plumbers, two garbage truck workers and a mailman. All of them CICADA agents in disguise.

It was a few steps away from the number 150 that he overheard a conversation between two neighbours. They complained the water supply had been cut in the basement of number 152, making it impossible to use the washing machines. A shared laundry? He watched the women go into the building directly at the right of 150, where Olivia's apartment was. He followed them stealthily and pretended to check the mailboxes until he saw them going upstairs. He went downstairs and confirmed the line of washing machines along a few old wardrobes cornered against a wall like an improvised storage room. The stench of humidity immediately crept into his nostrils. The basement dimensions were larger than the perimeter of the building, he quickly calculated. He walked to the opposite extreme and found the stairs that led to the entrance hall of number 150. He noticed the CICADA agents performing as porters controlling the access at the main entrance. He came back to the basement without producing the least noise and saw at the corner of his eyes a plumber working on an exposed water pipe in the wall. He would have to dress just like his fake colleagues from the neighbouring building in order to get inside. Making sure no one was around to witness, he quickly approached the lone plumber from behind and jumped at his neck. He tightened his grip with his arm around his neck until the man went fully unconscious. He then donned his overall and cap and dragged his body to deposit it into one of the nearby wardrobes. He took the toolbox and went upstairs as yet another plumber clocking in a shift.

The door of apartment 42B was sealed with police tape, as if it were a crime scene. If he tore them down, the CICADA agents would notice the housebreak and would alert them all to his presence. He improvised an alternative way in. He rang the door at the neighbouring apartment and stated he wanted to check the current state of the water pipes in the kitchen and bathroom because of the general maintenance of the plumbing system that was being carried out in the building. As the woman saw him wearing the same uniform as the other plumbers and remembering the van parked before the entrance, she didn't doubt to let him in. She showed him where the bathroom was and asked how long the procedure would take.

"It may take me a while, considering the deplorable state of the building," he said with confidence in his voice as he opened his toolbox on the floor.

The woman closed the door as he overheard her muttering a swearing word. He waited to hear her steps away from the bathroom to stand up. On his toes, he neared the door, latched it and faced the window. He opened it completely and went out through it, stepping on the ledge that ran all along the outside wall. He advanced slowly to the right until he found the next window. He looked inside through an opaque lace curtain. That had to be Olivia's apartment. He took out the crowbar and with calculated strength, he forced the window until opening it. He entered the place and hastened to Olivia's bedroom. Everything was just as she had left it. Everything remained in its place as if one day after running some errands she could no longer come back home. The stench of months without ventilation was impossible to escape. He stepped carefully with all his attention on the wooden floor. As he made it to her bedside table and under her bed, a plank gave up to his weight and lifted high enough to attract his attention. He kneeled, introduced the tip of his lockpick to lever it and removed it. There it was, just like Olivia had described. Inside a grey antistatic bag, the external disk. He placed it in between his clothes, put the plank back in its place and just as stealthily, he neared the window. Halfway there he remembered the other item Olivia had requested, the picture book. He returned to her bedroom and carefully opened the drawer of her bedside table. He produced the red cover picture book and only now as he measured its weight and dimensions in his hands, he understood the hacker's words. He opened the overall and quickly secured it in between his body and the closed up zipper. As he approached the window, he noticed a mutter coming from the aisle that alerted him. Without stopping his traces, he sharpened his hearing and believed to hear the neighbour's voice whom he had deceived as a plumber. She talked with a man of a deep voice. He quickly went out through the window and advanced carefully on the ledge until reaching the neighbour's bathroom window. He entered through it and noticed the woman and the man were at the other side of the latched door. He closed the window, placed the picture book in the toolbox's false bottom and unlatched the door. As the woman opened it, she found him picking up his tools and proving that the water ran normally from the sink and shower faucets. The man with her dressed as a porter. He clearly looked like someone with military training and the demeanour of a guerrilla veteran. CICADA. For an instant, he locked eyes with him. He said goodbye with a slight tip of his cap and opened his way in between the both of them to go out to the stairs.

He hastened towards the basement, changed into his original clothes, took out Olivia's picture book and put it inside his winter coat, along with securing the external disk in the opposite inner pocket. Then he placed the overall and toolbox in the wardrobe next to the unconscious plumber. As he came out to the exterior, the avenue continued its coming and going as normal. The CICADA agents still wandered the entrance of number 150, ignorant of how obvious their communications between one another appeared, even from a few meters' distance.

"I've got it," he muttered and lowered his face as he mingled among the passersby on his way to the metro station.

"Are you going for Decoteaux or should I wait for you here?" Olivia asked.

He had completely forgotten the Providence herald visiting Berlin. The same metro line he intended to take could lead him to the downtown, and in a matter of a few minutes, the French woman would be history. What would he get from eliminating her? Providence was no more, and if all Olivia needed from her heavily guarded apartment was the external disk and her picture book, then she had no reason ever to go back to the German capital. She could easily disappear anywhere else in the world, as the expert hacker she was, it wouldn't take her much effort to stay out of sight for a while from the Providence heralds' radars until the loose ends of the once-secret organization would finally realize nothing else remained, their efforts in vain equally to the power they still believed they had.

He stepped out and took a taxi instead. The crowd's noise suddenly bothered him. Quickly, he texted Olivia.

"On my way to the airport. We meet at the same spot in three hours."