When they returned to shore, Juen’s face was stinging and his ears were sore from the hours of sea spray and wind. He jumped out of the boat and helped drag it onto shore, working quickly with his men to pile the boats and equipment onto a waiting trailer truck that would transport them into storage. It was still dark, but the sun would come up in a couple of hours, and they had to return to Janloon. Aben and his men worked efficiently alongside them. After the gear was loaded and the truck had driven away, the No Peak and Mountain Green Bones climbed into their separate vehicles, though not before checking for car bombs the other side might’ve planted.
“Juen-jen,” Aben Soro said, touching his forehead.
“Aben-jen,” Juen replied, returning the gesture. He got into the front of his Roewolfe G8 and sped with his Fists back to the city. When the sun rose, he and Aben Soro would be enemies as usual, and he had to get to work.
CHAPTER
18
Catfish
Bero met his handlers every six to eight weeks, in different public places that he didn’t usually frequent and where they wouldn’t be overheard. Two days beforehand, he would get a note slipped under his apartment door with the date, place, and time of the meeting. He felt like a secret agent in a spy movie, except that it was not as glamorous as he’d hoped. He did not, for example, get a gun, or a secret phone, or a cyanide capsule with which to kill himself if he was ever caught by the Ygutanians. He did get a code name: Catfish. Bero disliked the name. Catfish were ugly bottom-feeders. He hadn’t been given any choice in the matter, however. He always spoke only with Galo, the Keko-Espenian man, while Galo’s partner, Berglund, kept watch by walking around nearby, disguised as a foreign tourist.
“Do you have any specific details about what they’re planning?” Galo pressed him again today, as they walked around the nearly empty art museum. Bero had never been in an art museum before. He pretended to study a display of indigenous Abukei pottery while speaking to Galo.
“They keep talking about doing something big, striking a blow, making a statement, vague shit like that,” Bero said, frustrated more at Galo’s incessant prodding than by his failure to garner detailed information about Vastik eya Molovni’s involvement with the Clanless Future Movement.
The clanless had grown. That much, Bero could tell them for certain. There were more people at the meetings, more people daring to stand up to the clans. Guriho’s speeches were getting so exuberant that sometimes Bero thought the man would begin frothing at the mouth or give himself an aneurysm. They had momentum now, Guriho said. The people were ready to defy the corrupt and oppressive forces of government, religion, and capitalism that had fettered them with the manacles of clannism. Or something like that. Bero couldn’t remember all the man’s flowery words.
“Guriho keeps saying that soon the moment will come for us to rise up in the streets and fight,” Bero grumbled to his handler, “but it’s not like he tells us exactly what that moment’s going to look like or when it’s going to be.”
“Have you had any success getting closer to the leaders?” Galo demanded.
“I’ve tried, keke,” Bero retorted, even though Galo was not a keke at all. “It’s the four of them—Molovni, Guriho, Otonyo, and that girl, Ema. They don’t bring anyone else in.”
Galo moved away from the glass case of Abukei pottery toward a wall of Deitist religious iconography, expecting Bero to stay with him. In the corner of the room, Berglund stowed the museum brochure he’d been pretending to read and followed after them at a distance. “We know the background of the three men, but this woman, Ema, what’s her story?” Galo asked. “She’s not Ygutanian, or barukan, or anyone with a political motive, as far as you’ve told us. What makes her one of the group’s leaders?”
Bero scowled, because he didn’t understand it either. For some reason, the woman had been admitted into Molovni’s inner circle, when Bero had not. She must be letting them fuck her. It was the only explanation.
“I already told you what I know,” Bero grumbled. “She works as a secretary somewhere downtown. She’s spent time living in Tun. Her family has a business, or they used to. I think it went under. That’s why she has a grudge against the clans, because they ruined her family, she says.”
Shortly after he’d begun working for the Espenians, Bero had succeeded in convincing Ema to go to a bar and have a drink with him. They stayed out for a couple of hours. She was nice to look at, and she even laughed at some of his jokes. She seemed like a lonely person without friends. Bero told her the story of how he’d gotten his crooked face, from being caught and beaten by the Maik brothers when he was sixteen years old. Of course, he had even bigger stories to tell, but he thought he would save them for later, since she might not believe them. To Bero’s disappointment, Ema was not as awed as he’d expected she would be. Worst of all, when he suggested they go back to his place, she said she had to work the next morning and gave him only a kiss on the cheek.