Operation Demetrios (3)
"O'Rooney... no, Miss Bronska. What on earth is the meaning of this...? And what is that dagger?"
I replied with the brightest, most radiant smile on my face.
"His name was... Declan Mackin, wasn't it? It was far too precious an artifact for a mere hedge mage like him to possess."
Even a pig like him could piece together what was happening with this much circumstantial evidence.
"To think you were a mage... Then this was all a trap...?"
His face was a picture of pure, unadulterated stupidity. I offered him my sincerest gratitude.
"To think you would promote such a mage to a high-ranking position. Thanks to you, Quartermaster, my goal was easily achieved. I've always been so grateful to the IRA."
As I spoke in riddles, he turned and began shouting frantically to the others.
"Executive Director Tsoy! Don't tell me you too? Colluding with the British Ministry of Magic... No, but what I just saw..."
"Then Rybakov? Was it you who betrayed me?!"
His mind must have been spinning. Mismatched puzzle pieces were scattered everywhere, and the missing link to connect them lay solely in my hands.
Soggy and pathetic, McDermott sprawled on the floor, now screaming my name in a desperate, ragged shriek.
"Irene Bronska! Do you have any idea how well I treated you?! And yet, you would do this to me—"
Bang! He was jabbering so loudly that I planted a lead bullet right into his chest.
Unlike the Ministry mages, this pig didn't enjoy the luxury of a bulletproof vest.
A wet, rattling gasp rose from his lungs as they began to fill with blood. Frothy crimson started to bubble and leak from the corners of his mouth.
"Shut up, Connor McDermott. A pig should know its place. 'How well you treated me'?"
"Guh... ugh..."
"It was painfully obvious you were racking your pathetic little brain just to get into my pants. Do you have any idea how agonizing it was for me to endure that disgust?"
Sigh. Why do only these kinds of people swarm around me? Truly, the past month and a half had been more mentally exhausting than physically draining.
Aiming at McDermott as he clutched his chest wound, I emptied the rest of my magazine into him, venting all my pent-up frustration.
Bang, bang, bang.
There was no reason to linger over a lump of meat that now had more holes in it than its original anatomy intended.
Since I couldn't leave a weapon with my fingerprints and ballistics behind at the scene, I handed the pistol to Pavel.
"Pavel, Rybakov. Is everything taken care of?"
While I personally dealt with McDermott, I had tasked the two of them with cleaning up the remaining survivors.
The combat information center... or what was left of it, was now nothing but a gruesome scene of devastation. Whether it was the British soldiers who had stood frozen like statues after being ensnared by my Charm, or the IRA leadership who had been subdued, bound, and gathered in one spot—all of them had been reduced to cold corpses.
The only living souls left were in the helicopter.
Using my telekinesis, I crushed the helicopter's black box, then 'ordered' the two pilots to slowly crash the aircraft into the building. A dull headache was beginning to throb in my temples, but until the very moment of their deaths, those two pilots would be incapable of thinking about anything other than slamming their chopper into the structure.
The aviation fuel that had been leaking for some time now caught fire. The sprinklers, having already exhausted their water supply, were useless in suppressing the flames. If anything, they only helped the fire spread faster by allowing the fuel to float and flow over the pooling puddles. It was a fire that would make analyzing the corpses' causes of death near impossible. I added a magical spark to the mix, feeding the growing inferno.
The path of destruction I left behind was highly satisfactory. Since I had also scattered the magical traces, matching them with the residues recovered from London's Blackwall Tunnel or the back alleys of Londonderry would require far more than just a day or two of effort. And even if they did manage to connect the dots, I had Delis on my side.
Turning toward the exit, I urged the two men forward.
"Let's go."
There was still much work to be done.
The next day. Executive Director Tsoy of Szczecin-Oder Logistics shed his mask and returned to being Pavel Nikolayevich Tsoy of the Northern Covenant Syndicate.
"Things went much smoother thanks to you. I suppose I should thank you."
"What, is that all? Aren't you being a bit too cold to the newcomer?"
They were the Syndicate's Security Chief and Information Chief. Excluding the one they served as the master of their souls, they held the highest positions in the entire organization.
"I don't care what others in the organization grumble about. To complain about someone the Lady personally chose is nothing short of disloyalty to her."
As one of the pillars of the Pentarchy, Pavel was well aware that some members harbored grievances regarding Lady Bronska's appointments. The HR Chief and the Information Chief sitting across from him had occasionally tipped him off about it as well. Even if an organization didn't run strictly on seniority, it was only natural that those who had served longer would expect to occupy key positions. Thus, it was inevitable that those who had been pushed down a rung would feel some resentment.
Yet, there were several reasons why this discontent was never openly expressed. First, the position of Information Chief was newly created. Second, as the organization had been semi-dismantled, they were able to appease potential dissenters by tossing them other key roles. And above all—Delis Bloomfeld had proven beyond a doubt that she possessed the sheer capability to command that seat.
As the Security Chief, Pavel found himself deeply impressed. Without the intelligence provided by the Information Chief, their plan to swallow the IRA whole would have been dead in the water before they could even attempt it. Therefore, Pavel Nikolayevich Tsoy harbored absolutely no personal resentment. Her loyalty to the Lady—which could have been her only potential flaw—had now been thoroughly and flawlessly proven.
As if reading his mind, the woman sitting across from him curled her lips into a faint smile.
"Is that so? Then, Pavel, what do you think?"
"As I have said repeatedly, I have no grievances against you, Bloomfeld. In fact, because you have no prior entanglements within the organization, I find you much easier to deal with."
It was the plain, unvarnished truth. Even in an organization like theirs, power struggles and checks on key positions were inevitable. Their founder and former leader, Lord Bronsky, had actually encouraged such checks and balances as long as they remained within manageable limits. The Lady, who had succeeded him, seemed to share a similar philosophy. After all, the Pentarchy was conceptually similar to the separation of powers in a democratic state. Of course, while the Syndicate was light-years away from democracy, it was an undeniable truth that autocracy or oligarchy yielded far better results than democracy—provided the leadership possessed exceptional competence.
Delis Bloomfeld tucked a strand of her raven hair behind her ear.
"Right. I could thank you a thousand times for that, Pavel."
"..."
Aside from Lady Bronska, the Information Chief was the only person who addressed him by his given name rather than his surname. And with those amber eyes staring intently at him, it was only natural that he felt a sudden, involuntary jolt.
"Ah, why are you looking at me like that?"
"...It's nothing."
Had he not spent so much time by his master's side, developing a decent tolerance to her Charm, he might have been utterly captivated on the spot. Objectively speaking, Bloomfeld's beauty was by no means inferior to the Lady's.
Clearing his throat a couple of times to regain his composure, Pavel directed a question to Delis.
"That aside, what is the reason you called me here separately?"
"..."
"Bloomfeld...?"
When he pressed her using her surname, he noticed her eyes had grown slightly vacant. It was as if her gaze was lingering somewhere in the past. "Ah, yes," the Information Chief murmured, snapping back to reality. When he asked if something was wrong, her reply carried a subtle weight.
"It's just... I was reminded of someone who is no longer here. You smell a bit like him."
Pavel pondered for a moment before instantly realizing who the 'someone no longer here' was.
"It seems your father and I happen to use the same cologne. If it makes you uncomfortable, I will change it."
"Huh? No, no, it's really fine. Truly!"
"...If you say so."
Since she insisted it was fine, pressing further would only be awkward. Pavel cleared his throat once more to steer the conversation, and Delis readily followed his lead.
"Actually, you are aware that Lady Yerina granted me access to 'some' of the documents, right?"
The documents in question referred to the digital files Lord Bronsky had saved on a DVD and entrusted to the Lady. They contained not only the tacit knowledge of running the Syndicate, but also—
"I found something that might serve as a clue regarding her Charm."
—the very documents that detailed the bloodline, the greatest mystery of all. Pavel recalled seeing a printed copy of them, if not the original. The tentative conclusion back then had been that without a test group, there was no way to explain the magical mechanism behind it. Thus, with a healthy dose of skepticism—yet harboring a sliver of hope that this genius Information Chief might have found a breakthrough—he asked:
"The Syndicate has searched high and low for answers ever since the Lady was a child. And yet, you found it in just two months, Bloomfeld?"
"Yes. And you just spoke the answer yourself."
She shrugged, her casual demeanor so baffling that he couldn't help but ask again.
"I spoke the answer?"
"Yes. You just said my name, Pavel."
"Delis Bloomfeld?"
Instead of answering verbally, she slowly nodded. In that moment, her silhouette seemed to overlap with Lady Bronska's. Then again, the Lady herself had once mentioned that she took Delis in because she felt a certain sense of kinship with her.
"A few days ago—when you and Lady Yerina were in Belfast—I went back to my old house to pack some of my things."
Since joining the Syndicate, Delis had been allocated a house in Greenwich, as was customary for its members. Her childhood home had been preserved according to her wishes.
Pavel gestured with his chin for her to continue.
"It's nothing grand, just a bit of family history. The Bloomfeld family immigrated to Britain barely over a century ago."
"And before that, you lived in Germany, as your surname suggests?"
"Strictly speaking, it was Prussia, but it's practically the same thing."
'Bloomfeld' was undeniably a German surname. Although tracing one's roots in a cramped Europe with frequent migration was often meaningless, it remained highly significant when dealing with the concept of hereditary magic.
"Anyway, when I looked into where my ancestors lived in Germany, it turned out to be East Prussia. Even my surname hints at it, doesn't it? It means a blooming field."
"The so-called estates of the Junkers."
From what Pavel knew, trying to trace the origin of the Charm using Delis as the sole subject had already hit a dead end. Since those were the words of Lady Bronska herself, they were undoubtedly correct. If so, the next logical step would be to investigate the land most closely associated with it. Having reached the same conclusion, Delis asked Pavel:
"Where did the former leader meet Lady Yerina's mother, and where was the Syndicate first founded?"
"Kaliningrad."
"Which was known as Königsberg until the Nazi era."
In that instant, Pavel felt a strange sense of foreboding. It wasn't a mage's intuition, but rather the raw instinct of danger he used to feel when crossing the threshold of life and death. Without hesitation, he immediately gave voice to this bizarre sensation.
"It seems... this is not a matter that can be handled at the level of a mere Chief."
Since he had used the word 'mere' for a Chief—the highest rank below the leader—there was only one person in the entire organization who could handle this matter.
"I agree. It's an incredibly sensitive issue. If a newcomer of barely two months like me feels it, I can only imagine how you feel, Pavel."
Pavel's mind drifted back to the Lady's actions the previous day. The expression she wore as she emptied her entire magazine into the IRA's Belfast Quartermaster with utter disgust. It was the face of a butcher slaughtering a pig. In any case, while the Lady generally respected the autonomy of her subordinates, she did so solely to maximize operational efficiency. If that autonomy crossed the line, she would intervene without exception. And in Pavel's estimation, conducting further investigations into Kaliningrad, the birthplace of the Syndicate, was definitely crossing that line.
"Did you call me here to ask me to report this to her directly?"
"Yes. After all, you are closer to Lady Yerina than I am. Besides, I'm not in a position to recklessly push this investigation further. It's not something that can progress any more from behind a desk."
Furthermore, Kaliningrad and its surrounding regions lay far outside the Syndicate's current sphere of influence. As the Security Chief, Pavel shuddered to think what would happen to any operative sent into Soviet territory if they were captured by the Spetsnaz or the KGB. After a brief moment of deliberation, Pavel could only give one answer.
"Understood. I will take responsibility and speak to Lady Bronska."
The moment the words left his mouth, Bloomfeld's eyes crinkled into a bright, cheerful smile.
"Ah, what a relief. You've taken a huge weight off my shoulders."
"Besides, unlike me, you still have plenty of work ahead of you. Now that we're returning to London, my clumsy act as a businessman is over, but yours isn't."
Just as he said, the roles of Executive Director Tsoy and Irene Bronska were practically finished. Rybakov was set to step into the power vacuum at the heart of the IRA, and the vacant positions of the mages had been arranged to be filled by the mages of the Equinox through contract extensions. Once the situation in the IRA stabilized, they planned to transition them into a dedicated, full-time magical force through a sole-source contract. Any complaints about outsourcing the vital role of mages could simply be crushed with an iron fist. As long as they held a tight grip on Belfast and Londonderry, any discontent in the rest of Northern Ireland would amount to nothing more than sporadic, trivial skirmishes. The American mob? While there were many Irish-American mobsters active in the New World, the Syndicate held a massive advantage in any direct war of attrition funded by raw capital.
The master of their souls had chuckled, calling it a 'classic military coup.'
But 'classic' meant it had been tried and tested throughout history, which in other words, meant it was the method most guaranteed to succeed. Unlike Pavel, who could delegate the messy details to his adoptive father, Rybakov, Delis's situation was entirely different. Having joined the Syndicate a mere two months ago, Delis Bloomfeld had already managed to rise as the most trusted magical technocrat under Lord Dunhaven, the Minister of Magic. She was indeed a very busy woman. Judging by her expression, she didn't seem to deny it either.
"True. I have a Ministry meeting first thing tomorrow morning. I'll leave it in your hands, then."
Her tone was light, almost contrasting with the surrounding gloom. It was a cheerfulness far removed from the despair he had glimpsed in her the day before. Yet, the brighter the light, the deeper the shadow. Pavel could sense the lingering darkness writhing and pulsing beneath her bright exterior. It was a sensation he knew all too well. He had felt it more than once today alone. It didn't take him long to grasp the truth.
She is just like Lady Bronska...
It was as if she had patched over an unfillable abyss of emptiness with wooden planks, nailing them down haphazardly and pretending the hole was gone. Only now could he finally understand why the Lady had been drawn to Bloomfeld by a sense of kinship.