Unholy Promises by Roxy Harte

pages of slave trade records, detailing exchanges made across the globe, the players a menagerie of international political figures and famous faces. More code and voila—the latest information on my brother—and perhaps the reason Eva has what appears to be a single-minded focus, an implication that King Cobra has someone working inside the WODC. Based on twenty-four months of explicit surveillance and documentation, Eva proposed an extreme operation that would destroy King Cobra’s operation, but she was denied, leading her to believe that the insider was a high-ranking official.
    Thank god, Henri is predictable. At six a.m. exactly, his key turns the lock. It doesn’t matter that he left only three hours ago; it doesn’t matter that it is Christmas day; his day begins at six a.m. and has for the twenty-odd years I’ve known him. I stall mid-pace, hearing the key, having paced for an hour already. I sit quickly.
    He enters the room to find me sitting calmly, waiting, in one of the two high-backed leather wingchairs, facing his desk. If he is surprised to find me still here, it doesn’t show on his face as he crosses the room and takes his seat behind his desk. Henri left knowing I didn’t have time to stop her. He left anyway, he made me hack in and steal the information, instead of just telling me, but why?
    “Find what you are looking for, Ari?”
    “She thinks that you are King Cobra.”
    “Yes.” His eyes glint mischievously, knowing I am closer to knowing my brother’s whereabouts now than yesterday. “It seems Eva has become a rogue agent, determined to bring down King Cobra on her own, if need be. I can’t trust her. Lucky for me that you showed up when you did.”
    “How so?”
    “You’ve read her assignment log?” He peers too deeply at me, making me nervous, he always the teacher, me the dense student. I stand and cross the room to look through his tall upper-level window. He joins me at the window and together we watch snow fall in the early morning light.
    I ask tiredly, “All of this has been for a reason, but I haven’t a clue what you want me to see. If Eva was rogue, as you suspect, she would have already met out justice against Nikkos … and King Cobra, who she thinks is you.”
    “Would she?” Henri asks, excitedly, and I still don’t see the hidden meaning. “Or does she see a savior?”
    “A savior, Henri?”
    “Oui, a savior, someone capable of seeing the job done.”
    I rub my hands over my tired face, “Please?”
    “Ari, Ari, Ari, mon ami, can you not see? She takes every assignment based on risk factor! I noticed the pattern years ago. She takes every one that has a ninety percent or better failure rate. At first, I thought she merely wanted to prove that she was the best, invincible, but non, she wants to not succeed. By taking on King Cobra, she guarantees a horrible retribution. She guarantees her own death.”
    I close my eyes against the glaring white of the snow-covered ground. “You think that she is messing with Nikkos to put her in King Cobra’s crosshairs?”
    “Exactement!” Henri gushes, ecstatic that I finally see. But I don’t see, I don’t see at all. The look I give him must tell him that because he continues, “Eva is our best, if she picks a private war with King Cobra, with the intention of getting herself killed, why would I interfere with that? Don’t you see? Her survival instinct is too strong. In the end, she will kill King Cobra.”
    “There is always the chance that she will die.”
    “She won’t die and all the work Nikkos has done will pay off when he takes King Cobra’s place.”
    “Oh God,” I say, realizing what has happened, what is happening, “That was his assignment all along? To reach a place of power within Cobra’s organization and become the bigger, badder fish? You put him in there as King Cobra’s replacement? You fuck!
    This is my brother! Do you know what kind of man it would take to replace Cobra?”
    “Oui,