Æquinoctium Ch. 01

CHAPTER ONE

Anomalous Materials

The name of Denise's double-date share was Thom, and for the better part of two hours Thom was dwelling on his favourite topic: Thom.

Denise was running out of ways to fake interest, and help was nowhere to be seen. By now Gina was solely concentrating on her own entertainment for the night. Thank goodness the four of them were sitting in a booth, or the display of pre-carnal tongue tussle would have got them thrown out of the restaurant. Most likely it had been part of the deal for What's-his-name to bring someone for Denise in return to get cosy with Gina. Well meant, Ginny, but badly executed...

"... which was where I met the Dalai Lama for the second time. The world really is a village. What about you?"

"What? I mean I beg your pardon; what about me?" Denise snapped out of her conversational auto pilot mode.

"Gina told me you'd used to travel."

"I did, yes," Denise confirmed, baffled by the golden ray of interest suddenly falling upon her. "But not recently. You know, the economy and all."

For a fashion piece huntress like herself it was the ultimate goal to overcharge her credit card on five different continents - but you know, the economy. Especially her own.

"Yes, she mentioned you have overdone it a bit with your latest shopping sprees and have to lay low now."

Denise threw a glance across the table that could corrode glass, but her blonde friend was too busy exchanging saliva samples.

"Actually," she replied, not happy with her friend's indiscretion, "there's quite another reason for me to stay beneath the radar." She granted herself a dramatic pause and a sip from her drink, only to continue in a conspirative volume. "All those easily traceable credit card data can compromise my mission."

"And what exactly is your mission?" he asked, his eyes suddenly agleam with morbid fascination.

Denise lowered her voice even more to squeeze every last drop of attention out of him.

"Normally I am not supposed to tell you without killing you afterwards..."

Thom raised an eyebrow, a mannerism he certainly had practiced in front of the mirror for many hours.

"You are some kind of spy?"

He made it sound quizzical, but he couldn't fool her - he was hooked up by her make-believe.

"We do not use the 's' word. I prefer HiRMO."

"A what?" Thom was forced to ask, just as intended.

"Oh sorry, it's not often that I talk about such things with non-assets: High Risk Mission Operative."

In her mind Denise congratulated herself. HiRMO - that nonsense had been a stroke of genius.

"Oi, you two! What's there to whisper about?" Gina giggled whilst her boy toy was nibbling the nape of her neck.

"Nothing, Ginny. Just discussing recent security policy."

Denise turned back to a flabbergasted Thom. Brushing a copper strand out of her face (a mannerism she had practiced in front of the mirror for many hours), she closed in for the kill.

"Maybe I will need you to cover me at some point. Helping me infiltrate a reception at an embassy, just for example."

She could almost see all worn-out spy flick clichés reeling before his inner eye. Ostentatious casinos owned by flamboyant villains. Exotic British sports cars pulling up in front (and miraculously not breaking down halfway). A micro camera hidden in the heroine's ample cleavage. Walther PPKs that never needed to be reloaded.

"And your current mission is a high risk one again?"

"Quite so. Two tonnes of weaponised Tristanium are being smuggled into continental Europe as we speak."

"What's Tristanium? Sounds radioactive."

Denise was about to confirm, going for a cool-sounding isotope Tristanium 999. But then she decided against it, just to see how far she could push two tonnes of bullshit.

"Not as such. It's what we call meta-stable. But it becomes super-instable when exposed to a certain type of electromagnetic radiation. It cannot be detected by Geiger counters, though, which makes it so hard to find."

"I've never heard of Tristanium. If it's an artificial element, it has to be radioactive," Thom mused, putting real thought into the matter.

Denise tried to remember the documentaries she would half-listen to whilst doing the chores. Like the one about all those fancy rare metals.

"Tristanium isn't geologically native to Earth. The whole batch that is en route comes from a meteorite having crashed in the Arctic some 100,000 years ago, been covered by amounts of ice and found by a Nazi expedition in 1944."

"And the Nazis tried to turn that stuff into a wonder weapon?"

The power of deduction was strong with him...

"Exactly. But the U-boat transporting the payload was depth-charged and barely managed to reach the neutral port of Dunseverick in Ireland."

Gina once had sent a post card from there whilst visiting Giant's Causeway, stating that she'd been cold, generally miserable, and that she'd wanted to be in Ibiza instead.

"The crew was interned and the cargo simply stored away, as nobody knew what they were dealing with. Until..."

She let Thom fill the gaps, and he did so happily.

"Until somebody has gained the knowledge and the means to secure the payload and bring it here at last."

"You do understand that you are not allowed to reveal any of this intel to third parties?"

"Yes, of course! Do you know yet who's behind it?"

"That's classified. Strictly need-to-know."

"Sure."

Denise, feeling rather smug with herself, took a mighty draught from her cocktail. Who would have thought that her vivid imagination and a - at least in her opinion - amiable fondness for fibs would be able to take a guy in so easily. She brought her mouth close to his ear.

"The operation is run by a clandestine organisation founded by former top-notch spies - I mean operatives - who are determined to shift the unilateral balance in their favours."

"Does that organisation have a name?"

Denise hesitated for the slightest moment. She had to come up with something cocky...!

"Aequinoctium."

Mission accomplished!

"Huh." Thom sounded genuinely impressed. "Good to know that the government has such a charming HiRMO on its side."

Time to deliver the coup de grâce:

"Who said I was with the government?"

If there was anything that sounded cooler than being a regular agent, it was being a rogue agent!

<~>

The ringing of the phone reached Denise in a particularly delicate phase of waking up after a night out - the stage in which she had to determine how bad the hangover would turn out to be.

A strong six on a scale from zero to ten. Fair enough.

Annoyingly, the ringing from underneath her pillows lacked the common courtesy to stop. She kept digging blindly with one hand for her mobile and finally managed to answer it. Sort of.

"Meh..."

"Rise and shine, sweetie!"

Gina had drunk twice as much as Denise - how could she be sober again a mere nine hours later?!

"Go away."

"Why so grumpy? It's a beautiful day! You've got a beautiful hangover!"

Denise retreated under the blanket.

"Your night went well, I trust? Yours, his, or did you two consummate your love in the alley behind the restaurant?"

A coy giggle from the other end of the line told her that Gina knew exactly why Denise was flashing her slut shaming licence.

"I may have been carried a bit away a bit too soon."

"It was disgusting. Geez, Ginny, families go there to eat!" Denise scolded her best friend playfully.

"How was it with Thom?"

Denise managed to put it diplomatic:

"Most of the evening I've hoped for some roofies to kick in."

"That's odd, because you have left a lasting impression on him."

"Have I, now?" Denise asked with only the mildest of interest.

"Maybe you want to check his blog."

"Why?"

Giggle.

All of a sudden Denise was sitting upright in her bed, suspecting the worst.

"Why? Ginny, I swear, I will dip every last thong of yours in chili oil--"

"Just look at it, I promise it's hilarious!"

Denise fished for her tablet PC, and Gina told her the address.

Thom's blog, "TheHunkyPhilanthropist", was a digital shrine to its creator's ego. Thom in Tibet, Thom swimming with whales, Thom solving the Mid-east conflict. His latest post was dedicated to last night's dinner at Le Hussard.

"It is with great unease that I share the details of a looming doom, trusted to me by a person deeply involved, the identity of whom I am not free to reveal..." began the paragraph that followed a lengthy description of his choice of food including photo. She remembered him pondering the perfect angle for minutes.

"Over a very light-bodied Sauvignon Blanc..." (his ordering the wine had been a piece of art in itself) "... she disclosed the pending arrival of a deadly fright. Tristanium, a bane from dark days of a century gone, will make landfall shortly, thus enabling a sinister organisation to wreak havoc untold. Said cabal, a consortium with unlimited resources only known as Æquinoctium, seeks to overthrow the political structures in Europe and establish its own reign of fear and terror."

Denise's one-time sort-of date continued to wrap up her yesterday's humbug in pretentious phrases, not shying away from embellishing many parts with additions of his own. The effects of Tristanium. The U-boat's call sign. Her admiration of him. Every good story deserved exaggeration. And snappy hashtags...

#Tristanium

#weaponised

#Æquinoctium

#Nazis

#Sauvignon Blanc

#...

"He is serious about it," she half asked, half stated into her phone whilst still being confounded by Thom's spelling of Aequinoctium.

"I think it's kind of adorable. Disturbing, but adorable. Mostly disturbing. There's a guy who believes every word a pretty girl tells him, as long as it sounds cool and confidential and shaken, not stirred."

Right now Denise was finding herself more in the neighbourhood of being baffled than of adoring. It told her a lot about the male mind if it was so eager to believe a story made up from pieces of bad spy flicks she had been forced to watch with back-then boyfriends. Gina provided an explanation of her own:

"You know what they say about you gingers..."

"That we love anal?"

"That you are enshrouded in an air of Celtic mystery."

Denise had been born and raised in Chicago. The greatest extent of Celtic mystery she'd encountered so far had been a shitfaced leprechaun barfing into her handbag at Saint Patrick's Day.

<~>

"C'mon, another lap," Gina cheered from over her treadmill.

"No way! I had to go back to the locker room to get my towel - that counts as cardio!"

One could tell that Denise had reached the limit of her endurance by her not commenting on mismatched workout gear anymore. The fitness centre was living up a bit, and Denise was longing for an omega 3 cinnamon power smoothie at the bar. What's the point in working out if you didn't gossip about the other gym folk in style and grace afterwards? She was about to pant an according suggestion, but for some reason Gina's attention was caught by the news programme on the array of flat screens mounted underneath the ceiling.

"Look!"

Denise glanced at the telly her friend was pointing at.

"Wow. That's an unfortunate tie..."

"Forget the tie! Listen!"

"Could you decide on one order?"

On the screen the newsreader with the tie situation just had finished his announcement, whereupon a corresponding clip started. A man in an unfunny suit and with an unfunny haircut, consequently occupying the unfunny position of a spokesman, was addressing waiting journalist.

"We can confirm that at no point hazardous material, neither suitable for nuclear devices nor for so-called 'dirty bombs', has crossed the external frontiers of the Community. Any alternative information has shown to be solely speculative."

Denise's eyes grew big as she let herself carried backwards by the treadmill belt.

"What the frog...?!"

"That's your bollocks story," Gina rejoiced. "You broke the news!"

As a quick check via portable web-enabled devices confirmed, Denise's little hoax had met in the course of the last forty-eight hours the fate of all utter nonsense in the age of omnipresent verification and digital enlightenment, where reliable proof of nearly anything - if so wanted - was literally a few mouse clicks away.

It had gone viral.

As shares were piling upon likes, the social networks went berserk, and the media were happy to follow. On the morning after gym night the generic statement of a spokesman wasn't deemed sufficient anymore. And so a politician showed up on TV, declared that he had no knowledge about any shipments of a substance called Tristanium, that his ignorance connoted safety, and that the internet should go back to kitten videos.

Unsurprisingly enough, not everybody was content with this comment. And whilst brainy people with glasses explained with endless patience that there was no room in the periodic table for an unknown stable element, that there were no records about a German expedition to the Arctic Circle in 1944, and that Dunseverick lies in Northern Ireland, rather than in the Republic of Ireland, and therefore hadn't been a neutral port at all during the war, the real wise and true opinions were formulated elsewhere. Like in Denise's office kitchen.

"There's that guy on the Internet," Guus from IT threw in, "who says that the Russians tried to breed Tristanium in Chernobyl. And that the metal roof doobrey they rolled over block no. 4 in 2016 was especially designed to deflect that electromagnetic stuff, so the reactor won't blow up again."

Denise, cleaning her coffee cup at the sink, tried to act unsuspicious. But she could feel her ears quickly turning the colour of her hair.

Penelope from Accounting, hobby nuclear physicist that she was, remained unconvinced.

"How can it be bred and weaponised if it is said not to be radioactive to begin with?"

"I tell you how: Because there's something the government and all those eggheads don't tell us. It's a classic conspiracy!"

"I dunno, Mulder. The whole Arctic meteorite story doesn't add up for shit, and they are painfully thin on facts about those Æquinoctium chaps."

Guus brushed her objections aside.

"Facts prove nothing."

Penelope sighed.

"Denise?"

Denise almost jumped. She turned to her colleague in a manner she hoped looked nonchalant.

"Huh?"

"Don't you need to be somewhere?"

"Wha--?" She looked at her watch. "Oh, crap!"

She had planned to meet with Gina at Bianchetti in her lunch break. The boutique to end all boutiques! First day of sale! An occurrence rarer than a full eclipse! No time for further explanations! Under Penelope and Guus' amused looks she shot out of the kitchen to fetch her blazer and handbag.

<~>

Late, late, late! She was going to be so late! Again her phone chimed. Denise let it chime. If she stopped now to start a search and rescue mission through her handbag to answer Gina, she would be even later. Bianchetti was only a couple of blocks away from Denise's office tower, but her heels were barely safe for work, let alone for running. Today might have been a good opportunity to exchange style for speed.

The black Geländewagen came out of nowhere. With squealing tyres it skittered to a halt across the pavement. Even before Denise could fail to skitter to a halt herself and run straight into the car, its passenger doors flew open. Two burly men stormed out, clad in dark clothes and balaclavas. Gloved hands grabbed her, and one of the blokes pressed a sinister device against her side. Denise's muscles were immediately turned useless by the electrical discharge that followed. The debilitating pain would have brought her to her knees if she weren't already been sized. With neither fuss nor effort the second man hurled her into the off-roader and climbed on the backseats as well. The one who'd tasered her resumed his place next to the driver. With no regard for pedestrians or traffic the car set off, back onto the street. Inside a fourth member of the grab team was forcing Denise down whilst his comrade zip-tied her hands behind her back. Denise, recovering from the jolt, started to struggle in vain.

"Get off me!"

"Silence," the fourth grabber barked.

"You can't do this! I'm an American citizen!"

He produced a lightproof hood and pulled it over her head.

"Welcome to the free world..."

<~>

Orange did not go well with her hair. But Denise hadn't got much more to wear than the prison-like scrub after being made to take off her normal clothes. The longish chain between her handcuffs rattled through the ring in the table top as she shifted on her chair. Both table and chair were made of metal and bolted to the floor. There was no way for her to tell the time, but her abduction and subsequent processing must have taken several hours. Once she had been put into the unfortunate attire with a big black "207" on the back, she had been locked into this windowless room - for softening up, as she reckoned. She was tired of waiting, tired of being in permanent anxiety.

"Hello! Anyone? I know you can hear me!"

Sure as shite there were mics and cameras hidden in the room, although it was missing the large one-way mirror so obligatory in telly series. Denise groaned in frustration and shifted again. Her back hurt from the forced position, as she could neither sit straight nor fully stand up.

With a metallic noise the door was unlocked. It swung open, then closed again, granting just enough time for a grey suit to enter. Said suit was housing a deliberately plain-looking man who wordlessly seated himself opposite her on a second, non-bolted chair. He spread out a file on his side of the table and pretended for some minutes to read in it. Was Denise at first feeling unsettled, then deeply uneasy in his presence, her attitude was changing more and more towards irritation with every passing second.

"Did you enjoy your body cavity search, Ms Carlisle?" he asked without looking up.

It hadn't been so much a search than an epic quest.

"Your colleague better have herself checked for circulatory disorder - hands this cold can't be healthy."

The suit person closed his file and finally raised his head.

"Anything else you want me to pass on?"

"I want a lawyer."

Suit-Man emitted a staged sigh.

"It's always amazing how quickly you people demand the comforts of a rule of law state once you are nicked."

Denise wasn't sure what to make out of that comment. She had never been you-people'd before (well, other than in reference to her hair colour).

"And who are you again to deny me my constitutional 'comforts'?"

"I am just an interpreter assigned to your case."

Not only did Denise speak the country's language just fine, she had also read enough spy novels to know "interpreter" to be a euphemism for "interrogator" - which in turn was a euphemism for "torturer".

"What do you want from me?" she treated more carefully.

"There are just a couple of questions we would like to ask you."

"This is what you do to people whom you just like to ask 'a couple of questions'?"

"You should be glad. If the situation were not being contained on several levels, you would now be having a wet cloth over your face."

The allusion made Denise turn ash-pale, even for her complexion. Her change of facial colour did not go unnoticed by her host.

"You finally gain awareness of the repercussions which follow terroristic attempts, I see."

Denise hadn't got the slightest idea how to repeat to that, so she settled for a classic:

"Wha--"

"Did you really think that blog wouldn't put us on your tracks?"