The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 82

“He joined you,” Ellie said.

Terry looked at her and nodded.

“He joined you,” Ellie said again. “Fuck.”

“Is that so surprising?”

“Um, yes. Given who he is. Given his family.”

“That might be why he did.”

“But you’re terrorists,” Ellie said, still slightly confused, still having trouble with that.

“Well, you would think that…”

“No,” Ellie said. “Actually. I don’t think anything particular, but groups like this one murder people and blow people up.”

“Not groups like us.”

“Militia groups. Debt-resistance groups.”

“Some people in the movement do terrible things…”

“Like blow people up?” Ellie said, sharply.

“Like harm innocent people, yes.”

“And that doesn’t bother you…?”

Terry looked around, and the ruins of his compound, at the dead lying nearby and the drone still hovering above them.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “I suppose.”

“We all do what we have to do,” Terry said.

“I do it for the right reasons.”

“The reasons you think are right.”

Ellie sighed. She’d had this conversation with people like Terry dozens of times before. People who believed always believed their cause was right. They believed it so firmly it usually wasn’t worth arguing.

“This group,” Terry said. “The Liberty Brotherhood, we only strike military and debt corporation targets.”

“Of course you do,” Ellie said.

“We do.”

“The targets you think are military ones?” Ellie said. “Until they turn out not to be?”

She was sceptical. She was bored. She’d heard all this before, as well. The claims about some targets being proper targets for terrorism was one people like Terry always made. Hajjis made it, debt-resistors made it, the oil-smuggling gangs in West Africa made it too, at least the ones which claimed to be community activists rather than simply criminals. As if bombs cared, and mass-shootings counted less against some buildings and some people than against others.

Ellie sighed. She’d almost felt sorry for Terry, just for a moment. She’d almost liked him as they talked, but he turned out to be just another murderer. A murderer just like she was, except that unlike her, he was lying to himself about what he was

“We’re careful,” Terry said.

“Yep,” Ellie said. “You people always are.”

“No,” Terry said. “You don’t understand. Some members of the patriot and resistance movements go too far at times, but our group, the Liberty Brotherhood, we never do. We only ever strike military targets.”

Ellie noticed he’d said patriot and resistance movements like they were two different things, but she didn’t bother asking. That was something for the intel people who tracked memberships and leaders to worry about. Asking would just get her a long, long speech about schisms and heresies and who’d once said what and who wasn’t pure enough for who. Insurgent groups always had factions. It didn’t matter whether they were hajjis or debt-resistors or whoever else. People in hiding, people who lived in the shadows, they spent too much time in dark cold rooms on their own, which meant they spent too much time brooding and thinking up imagined grudges with one another. There were always factions, always, and working those out was what intel operators spent most of their time doing.

It bored Ellie. She was glad she did combat ops, not intel. She didn’t care enough to listen to Terry, so she interrupted him before he could explain it all to her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“I swear,” Terry said. “Only military targets.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, losing interest. “Whatever. I don’t really care.”

“We’re careful.”

“And I don’t care. A debtor is a debtor. A resistor is a resistor. It doesn’t matter to me. Tell me about this kid.”

“What about him?”

“Everything,” Ellie said. “Just tell me anything. Tell me why he’s here.”

“He’s a patriot,” Terry said.

Ellie looked at Terry for a moment, thinking. It was an odd word, and old word, and Terry saying it now didn’t quite fit with what Ellie thought it meant, not for a privileged heir from Shanghai. But she thought she understood. From Terry, it was praise, a compliment, meaning someone who was part of his cause, so he used it for the kid.

“He’s really part of your group?” Ellie said, still thinking about that, still unsure.

“Yes, he is.”

“He came here to meet you?”

Terry nodded.

“He knew you already?” Ellie said. “He’d met you, what, over the internet?”

“Yes.”

“He’s with your group,” Ellie said, beginning to believe it.

Terry nodded again.

“For how long?” Ellie said, curious.

“He’s been speaking to us for three or four months. I think he’s been in contact with sympathisers in the resistance movement for a year before that.”

Ellie nodded again. So a bored, spoiled heir, stricken with guilt about his privileged upbringing, had suddenly decided to make amends by helping the debt-ridden and poor. It made sense, she supposed. At least, it made a lot more sense than a spoiled rich brat deciding to holiday in the middle of Měi-guó.

She just wished he hadn’t somehow dragged her family into his crisis of conscience, along with his own.