No Strings Attached (2)
In some ways, the ball Delis mentioned was the perfect opportunity for me and the Syndicate to get closer to the inner workings of the Ministry of Magic. The position of heir apparent to the Marquis of Dunhaven and the Minister of the British Ministry of Magic made him an incredibly tempting target, regardless of his personal character. Even putting aside the absurd relationship he was demanding from Delis, he seemed ripe for the picking—a source from whom we could extract information far beyond the intelligence we had gathered so far.
Of course, after hearing the gist of the situation, I immediately doubled Delis's security. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you. Since the future head of the Ministry of Magic had taken a personal interest in one of his subordinates, background checks to see if she was a suitable match were undoubtedly being carried out behind the scenes. Consequently, Delis's radius of action had to be restricted. Her access to classified documents was a perfect example.
Until now, Delis's only method of smuggling classified information out of the Ministry building was relying entirely on her memory. Copying data onto DVDs would leave a trace on the central server and database, so she had no choice but to commit everything to mind. Even so, a record of when and where she accessed which documents was still kept. The only reason she had been able to cover up her clearly above-average frequency of accessing classified files was because she had consistently brought corresponding benefits to the Ministry afterward.
When the Syndicate hunted down the remnants of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland, we often deployed the mages of the Equinox, but we also frequently subcontracted the work to the Ministry. Since those pests kept popping up anyway, we fed the Ministry easy victories and boosted their performance records, thereby solidifying Delis's position.
"Still... it would be wise to exercise some restraint from now on, Delis."
"Yes, as you said, I must reduce the frequency. I will be especially careful about accessing classified files that have little relevance to my official duties."
The heightened security measures to protect Delis's double life were also being implemented elsewhere—specifically, outside the Ministry of Magic's headquarters in Whitehall, Westminster. To shake off the Ministry's obsessive surveillance, we couldn't afford to let our guard down even after returning to our safehouse complex in Greenwich. After all, the vast majority of our operatives, as well as the rest of the Syndicate's executives (excluding the heads of other branches), had established their residences in Greenwich.
In other words, if anyone were to look into the property transaction records and actual resident registries, they might suddenly notice something amiss. Of course, we had designed at least four or five layers of safeguards. The operatives actually living there were registered under separate paper companies rather than Szczecin-Oder Logistics, and we had falsified the transaction dates and amounts.
The "safehouse" in Greenwich, London, wasn't actually a single large building. Rather, it was more accurate to view it as a cluster of residential properties. This was why I said that anyone trying to locate the headquarters of the Northern Covenant Syndicate with only a superficial understanding of our organization would almost certainly go on a wild goose chase. In that sense, the Syndicate operated like a decentralized network, woven together by warp and weft invisible to any outside observer.
"Who could possibly notice? Even if the timing of your move and your address are similar to mine, Delis."
"Since we have minimized any connection to the extreme, it should be fine. It is entirely plausible for a prime suspect in the Rosetta Stone heist to simply live in the same neighborhood."
"Furthermore, didn't you meet me in Paris based on that very fact? It won't be easy for them to suspect this place."
With these layers of safeguards stacked upon one another, the Syndicate's security vulnerabilities were practically nonexistent. Of course, we had to hide our tails as much as possible. Ensuring we weren't being tailed was part of that. Surveillance and tailing weren't just paranoid delusions; we had actually spotted individuals presumed to be from the Ministry of Magic wandering around the Greenwich area on several occasions. It was incredibly annoying, especially since it prevented us from holding our regular face-to-face briefings.
It wasn't unexpected, but it was still quite a hassle now that it was happening. Thus, the intelligence director's briefings and communications were conducted via a separate landline. By utilizing the communication lines we had laid down last autumn through a subsidiary paper company, landline reporting was easily manageable. We had originally installed these lines to allow the safehouses in Greenwich to communicate with each other in an emergency without the risk of wiretapping on public lines, but I hadn't expected to use them like this.
I was also stripped of the freedom to drop by the security director's office at any time under the guise of "operational efficiency." From what I had observed, Delis seemed to find this restriction the hardest to bear. Consequently, the person burning with the greatest passion to resolve the current situation was none other than the intelligence director herself.
"To be honest, it is indeed difficult. Part of me wishes February would arrive sooner. At least then, a conclusion will be reached one way or another."
"Haha, but we can't have the day of the ball arrive before we're fully prepared, can we? I've only just begun getting ready to dig into Benjamin Ashford."
"Well, that is true, but..."
Our conversation had been entirely over the wire instead of face-to-face. Even through the receiver, I could practically hear Delis grinding her teeth.
"Don't worry too much, though. Everyone in the Syndicate is fighting hard in their respective positions, aren't they? We have to stop you from becoming some fifty-something noble's trophy marchioness, no matter what."
If worst came to worst, there was always the extreme option of Delis simply rejecting the marriage proposal outright without looking back. However, the biggest catch was that doing so would draw the ire of both the Marquis of Dunhaven and Benjamin Ashford. What if she ended up suspended or stripped of her duties within the Ministry? Like it or not, this was a situation that required a direct breakthrough.
Delis reacted with genuine disgust.
"Ugh... just the thought of it is repulsive. I think I understand a little of how you felt during the New Year's party, Lady Yerina."
"Right? I was just a passing servant, and yet I could feel his persistent, slimy gaze. That says it all."
Come to think of it, I felt one noble in the Syndicate was more than enough. My father, Willo Bronsky, was essentially a margrave who had been granted the territory of Kaliningrad by the Soviet of Materialists, so technically, that made me a noble lady. Although the Reds had severed the necks of the reactionary nobility, leaving me unable to return to my granted fief, I had no intention of surrendering my title. If they had a problem with it, they could come and take it themselves.
"Speaking of which..."
Delis broached the subject.
"What is it?"
"...Come to think of it, I need to buy a dress for the ball."
"Ah, indeed. He really makes people suffer in all sorts of ways."
"It would be difficult to go shopping with the other members, so I suppose I'll have to choose one on my own."
Hearing Delis's dilemma, a sudden thought struck me.
"Why don't you just wear one of my dresses? Our heights are similar, and as for our chests, it's not like there's a massive difference... Ah, wait. That won't work."
My voice trailed off before I could finish the sentence. Of course, the issue wasn't a massive difference in bust size. Rather, the dress I used to wear since Belfast had been torn to shreds in Marseille during my trip to France. I had completely forgotten about it since I hadn't had any occasion to wear it, but the memory had just resurfaced.
"Either way, it seems I'll have to buy a new one."
"Do as you wish. I don't think I'll need to buy one."
I shrugged as I answered, prompting Delis to ask out of curiosity.
"Are you planning to attend as well, Lady Yerina?"
"I suppose so. We can't let the Syndicate's strongest asset sit idle, after all. Pavel will probably be there too."
"Even Pavel...?"
A New Year's party or a ball—they were practically the same thing. Given how obsessively he had dictated the dress code for the servants at a party he hadn't even hosted, his upcoming ball under his own name wouldn't be much different. If possible, I intended to attempt an infiltration in a maid uniform once again. It was nice not having to throw away an outfit I had already prepared after just one use.
After listening to Delis vent under the guise of a landline briefing, something finally came up that sparked my own enthusiasm. A few days later, an opportunity to meet with an American arose. As for how they had contacted us, it was through the casino in Marseille, just like last time. We had let an American visitor in, assuming he was just an ordinary tourist, only for him to subtly leave behind a message indicating his desire to establish contact as he departed.
The intent to meet was engraved across several chips, which had now crossed the English Channel and lay before me. I toyed with the 500-franc chips. I slid them between my fingers, rolled them across my palm, and occasionally slotted a single chip back into a neatly stacked pile—parlor tricks known as chip tricks or chip shuffles. The American who visited the casino must have engraved his message onto the chips while performing these very actions.
I ran my finger along the edge of a chip. Unlike their originally smooth surfaces, every single one on my desk had rough, engraved ridges. The cipher was carved into the side of each chip in Morse code. Deciphering it yielded an alphanumeric string that seemed entirely chaotic at first glance. The seemingly random sequence of characters was actually a Caesar cipher, with the letter 'W' serving as the decryption key.
After arranging the chips in various combinations, I derived an address somewhere in the Republic of Ireland, along with a date and time. Given that the decryption key was 'W', it was a clear imitation of the note I had handed over on the night of the New Year's party. I suppose they didn't want to be the only ones on the receiving end.
What surprised me most while handling the chips was the sheer precision of the craftsmanship. To engrave such incredibly thin dots and dashes right along the center of a 3.3-millimeter-thick clay composite chip... The method used to carve the cipher was undoubtedly magic. It wasn't as if he had carried a needle into the restroom to pull off this stunt.
Even after analyzing the American's movements on the casino's CCTV, we found nothing suspicious. ...To pull this off right under the noses of the dealer and everyone else?
Most, if not all, of the casino staff were Syndicate members. In particular, the dealers were exclusively mages. This meant that the well-built American who visited the casino had used precise telekinesis or some other magic to carve these engravings, completely bypassing the senses of our mage dealers.
Truly remarkable...
Honestly, it wasn't something I couldn't do. If I set my mind to it, I could certainly pull it off without leaving any magical traces behind. But if asked whether I could do so without breaking concentration, losing at poker, or losing track of the engraved chips—
That would be pushing it.
—the answer was "no." Since reviewing the CCTV footage yielded no evidence of cheating, it meant a man with nerves of steel—capable of calmly executing such a feat while maintaining a perfect poker face—had paid a visit to Marseille.
It felt like a warning of sorts. A message saying, We can destroy any business under your Syndicate's influence whenever we please. It was true that such a disruption would deal a painful blow to us. But if I were the type to fold under such cheap intimidation, I wouldn't have rebuilt this organization in the first place. A probing match between two hedgehogs, neither knowing how many needles the other possesses, must ultimately be resolved by clashing spine against spine.