"If what you just said is true, we need an urgent meeting right away."

"I can assure you my informant has no reason to lie."

"And I believe you, Virgil. You and him. Stay in the safe house while I gather the team. I'll call back."

"Yessir."

Ulrich Seiber hung up the phone. One of his internal rules was to always maintain a correct and serene poker face against whatever might ensue, to keep a distance from the world and from himself. This was no exception, although he didn't lack grounds to at least raise an eyebrow. Instead, he smoothed his Oxford Blue necktie, adjusted its knot, and pressed the button under the desk. The voice of his assistant appeared in the speaker under the varnished oak wood.

"Sir."

"Astor, call all the S rank agents available for an emergency meeting."

"Yessir, immediately."

Four minutes passed until Astor managed to drum up everyone he could, long enough for Seiber to finish his Lucky Strike and rehearse his words, as he usually did when possible. The voices of his agents ensued under the wooden slats.

"Zill here."

"Juernes here."

"Virgil here."

"Celik here."

"Natal here."

"Reivik here."

"Proto here."

"Kamini here."

"Cinis here."

"Byakko here."

Astor's voice concluded the roll call.

"All right, Sisumara," finished the assistant, mentioning Seiber by his codename, as all the Nizar elite staff did when addressing him by phone. "Those missing are on missions."

"It doesn't matter; pass them the intel when they're reachable. Well." He cleared his throat. "This is an emergency briefing. One with intel I'd never thought I'd spread around, but which I deem dishonest not to talk about given this new context." He leaned his head back against the chair, as if trying to recalibrate his own self within his world frame. "We are hunters. We've always been hunters. But as you know, lately, we've also become the quarry. For two years now, our activities have been repeatedly and obsessively troubled by individuals of all shapes and sizes with the sole purpose not to warn, not to intimidate, but to liquidate, exterminate, outright efface us from the Earth. It's been relentless. They've been hunting many of us down, including some of my best men."

"Hadn't been for you, we would already be dead."

"Let me finish, Cinis." Seiber propped both elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. "They've also been gunning for us in other ways: from our clients to our objectives, even our links and sleeper cells. Obviously, all these apparently unjustified attacks made us take action to find answers. Answers we got based on leaks and interrogations, as you know. Many did not speak and died as a result, but those who did said the same thing: they were employed by the United States. Nothing more, nothing less. Considering the exquisite procedures of Natal as an interrogator and his subsequent thorough studies, there is no reason to doubt that statement. But this answer has done nothing except raise other unknowns, the primary one being why those who once were our most solicited clients and highest bidders suddenly wanted our heads stuck on a pike. A mystery I could not find an answer to, but which has been surprisingly solved less than half an hour ago."

A tumult of murmurs resonated on the slats as rain against glass, interrupting his speech. Again, he cleared his throat once, twice.

"Gentlemen, if you don't mind...well. Thank you. I was saying we now know why this happened. We already have the solution to our particular enigma, a solution so bizarre that even my mind couldn't come to grips with it. You see, I have a brother. A twin brother, with whom I'm not on the best of terms, to put it euphemistically. It's been a while since I last saw him, and I sincerely hoped not to cross his path again. But apparently, he wanted to cross mine. And he couldn't have done it better, for he posed as me and stole an American military prototype, making the United States Army believe it had been me all along. I don't doubt he did it that way not only to bring a gift to his owner with impunity but also to throw me to the wolves. Or in this case, the eagles."

"So, you're on the list of the most wanted," weighed in Juernes.

"The only reason I haven't been taken down is because of my scrupulous routine of hiding from the outside. And that's precisely why Nizar took a hit. Before defecting, my brother must have left several traces of my relationship with our organization for the Americans to work with. All that gives a clear answer to happened; we are being subdued, cornered, so I come out of the shadows."

"And what do you want us to do now?" asked Zill with his characteristic broken voice.

Ulrich allowed himself a short silence before answering with the raw solemnity of a leader.

"There's already a bounty on the fugitive Skyler Landau. I've had some people asking to hire us for that. He will meet with his brother, if he hasn't done so by now, and my brother should be with them both. The only thing we have to do is get to my brother and leave him alive at the entrance of the Pentagon with a bow on his head and a letter of apology between the cheeks of his butt. Now, Zill, it's you who's in charge of tracking the signal from the transmitter Virgil put in the plane, right?"

"I've taken up position on a hill next to the airstrip. I saw two men getting off, one with a beard and cap, and another with a Hawaiian shirt."

"The latter's the chief's brother," intervened Virgil. "He may've changed, but in close quarters, he didn't fool me. By the way, sir. It's likely that many other top dogs will wind up knowing who Landau is and will want to take a stab at getting him alive."

Seiber dropped a sigh of derision and punched a button behind the mic.

"It doesn't matter. We are Nizar, the most select organization of hitmen in the history of the world. For the right price, we can kill God himself. No one is safe from us. We are the wielders of fate. And this is a personal crusade." He slid his view towards the oak slats, streaked with the dark lines of the wood grain, which curled and twisted and intertwined. For a moment, he thought they were telling a story. "We're in a race against the world, and we have a head start. For now, all operatives stick to your briefings and follow my instructions. As for you, Virgil, you ought to tie up one last loose end, and you must do it now."

Virgil swallowed before replying with calculated cynicism.

"Yessir."