The Zaanics Deceit (Cate Lyr #1) Read online

  The Zaanics Deceit

  (Cate Lyr Novels #1)

  Nina Post with David J. Peterson

  The Zaanics Deceit is copyright © 2014 by Nina Post, LLC. All rights reserved.

  The Væyne Zaanics language and Yesuþoh character set are copyright © 2014 by David J. Peterson and Nina Post, LLC. All commercial rights reserved. Non-commercial use of the Væyne Zaanics language and Yesuþoh character set is permitted under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

  For my father, who fostered a love of words — some of them Japanese.

  Mur ulba ovæ yesæj min murna tosocsa larnenær …

  We created a secret language in order to preserve our vision …

  Tiriva viþenos!

  Praise the pigeon!

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Authors

  Chapter 1

  Istanbul — October 2013

  Cate Lyr ran her crew for the Istanbul job from a former bank in the Karaköy district, nestled between a plumbing parts supplier and a mechanical shop. That’s where she directed all of their jobs, because her role demanded separation.

  Designing heists helped Cate with the anxiety she’d struggled with since childhood. When she planned a heist, she did what she was naturally best at, made possible by the gift and the curse of her anxiety: anticipating threats and worrying about how she would handle them. She thought in long-term sequences, and tried to iterate every variation of worst-case scenarios and possible complications.

  When her father told her to leave and never come back, she learned something important. Even with all her worry, she could still be surprised, and her meticulous planning couldn’t assure her control. Knowing this allowed her to keep her cool while the job was taking place.

  The challenge of her work — and the risk of it, when she had avoided risk her whole life — was exhilarating. She used to be a rule-follower, and she used to be honest. Neither of these virtues had done her much good. It seemed that only people like her sisters could prosper.

  Each of the men on her crew had wide-angle cameras attached to their shirts, giving Cate a comprehensive view of their surroundings. The footage showed up on her four computer monitors, placed side-by-side on the desk. She could watch, guide, and control the event from the safety of her house.

  This job was a big one, too. They were going after the ultra rare 26-carat yellow diamond and the 12-carat round pink diamond featured at a trade show, one of the big ones that had dropped down in Istanbul, a city better known for its gold. A city she had settled in. A city that had given her room to hide and to heal. Finally, she had found a safe harbor. Finally, she had reached a state of tentative equilibrium.

  The minute they were clear, Mercury would take the diamonds to their contact, who would disguise the diamond, create new certificates, and then pass it back into the market, usually to a buyer they identified beforehand. Then she and her crew would receive half of the value; the services of their fence didn’t come cheap. Sometimes, when she spotted a particularly nice diamond on a woman’s left hand, she’d wonder if it came from one of her jobs.

  Cate warmed her hands on her Mr. Tall mug, which she’d found at a Paris flea market and bought as a gift for someone she never expected to see again. It was one of the few personal items on display around the house, which she had lived in for three years. She didn’t have any photos of her family, but even if she did, it would be too painful to keep them within view.

  Her eyes flicked from screen to screen. Scanning the visuals, she calculated any short-term threats and tactical variations based on her crew’s current position.

  Outside, it was dark and cold, but morning prayers would start soon.

  A chat request popped up on her screen from BAN33.

  BAN …

  After a moment, she realized who it was and her first reaction to this unwelcome and very unanticipated intrusion was a busted steam pipe of outrage. This was her hard-fought safe harbor, and the past that she was trying to keep at a distance just sauntered up, raised its leg, and pissed on it like a dog marking its territory.

  “Benjamin Alden Nightjar,” she said through clenched teeth. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  After half a minute, she reached out and rejected the request.

  Whatever he wanted, it wasn’t her business, not anymore. Benjamin’s intrusion was pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen during the crucial final stages of this job, at least in terms of how it affected her focus. This was one of those random things you couldn’t control, but it shook her because in five years, no one in the family or connected to it had contacted her. Cate had purposely made herself difficult to find, but it wouldn’t have been impossible.

  Moments after regaining her concentration, there was a knock at the door. She got up and looked through the peephole she had installed after moving in. No one was there, but just as she turned away, there was another knock. She rose up on her toes and looked down through the peephole. A child?

  She cracked open the door.

  A Turkish boy of eight or nine stood a few inches in front of the threshold. He said nothing, just handed her a folded piece of paper. Once she had it, he climbed onto a bike and pedaled away. It was early for a kid that age to be out, wasn’t it? Cate locked the door then unfolded the paper. The message was written in an adult hand she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t in Benjamin’s elegant right-slanted cursive, which she’d recognize as well as her own handwriting.

  My Dear Cate,

  Forgive the intrusion, but you did reject my chat request. This is very serious. I urgently need your help. So please let me say what I need to say.

  Benjamin

  Not a minute later, the landline phone rang. “No way.” Hardly anyone had that number. Cate hurried back to the desk and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “Don’t hang up on me.”

  Benjamin.

  Something cracked at the sound at his voice. After her father severed his connection to her, she severed all of her connections, including to Benjamin — he was the family’s attorney, after all. She’d missed him, but hearing his voice brought on a barrage of images and memories she resented having to see again.

  “How did you do that?” she asked through clenched teeth.

  “Do what?” Coy.

  “First. How do you know where I am? Second. How did you get a local kid to show up here the minute I rejected your chat request? Third. What do you want from me?” Her body was as tense as a catapult, and she willed herself to try to relax.

  “First, I’m just that good,” he said. “Second, I’m just that good, and the boy helps his father deliver tea in the mornings. Third, I need you to do something for me, Cate. I need you to do something I know you’re very good at.”

  Do what she was good at? Planning thefts of jewelry and art? Basic accounting? Operating an import/export business? Worrying about possible calamities? Hemingway wrote in Death in the Afternoon of the place in the ring where the bull prefers to be. Cate didn’t forget, though, that the matador co
uld lead the bull away from his place of safety to his death.

  “Sorry, Benjamin.” Cate glanced at the clock that was set to local time and studied her screens. “I have to go.”

  “Right. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

  “How … never mind. You know what? You’re like The Claw, from Inspector Gadget.”

  “Not familiar,” he said, so droll.

  No surprise there. Benjamin was an aficionado of opera, classical music, wine, and gourmet food. “All you ever saw of The Claw was his arm and hand,” she explained, “and the cat he was always stroking. He handled all of his villainous tasks by phone.” Cate closed her eyes and shook her head. Talking like that meant her defenses were down, as though this was a normal conversation. It wasn’t.

  “I don’t have a cat,” Benjamin said. “I wouldn’t trust it around my things. Is that how you think of me? A disembodied arm?”

  Cate sank into her chair again. “Maybe. And you have no idea what I’m good at. You don’t know me anymore.”

  He chuckled. “I know you better than anyone, Cate. I know who you were then, and I know who you are now. I have to say, I’m not pleased with your current vocation. I always hoped you’d follow in my footsteps and become a lawyer. We would have made a formidable team.”

  She sat back and watched Vulcan get through the lock. Her crew didn’t need her just yet. Normally, most of her work was done beforehand. “The Cate you knew died that night. I have a different life now.”

  “Gaelen and Romane’s shares from the trust have vested,” Benjamin said, trying a different path. “Gaelen is the dictator of Lyr Logistics now, while Romane is heading up the philanthropic foundation, if you can believe that. The thing is, though, Cate — your sisters taking over the company is the least of our problems.”

  “Our problems?” She laughed. “There is no our anymore, remember?”

  “I’m well aware, believe me, but please, listen. This is important.”

  “No, Benjamin, what I was doing before you called me is important. You have no idea — ” she broke off. He had no idea how precarious everything felt. How amazing it was that she had made her way to this. How much she missed her father, even after what he said.

  Cate kept her eyes on the screens, trying to get herself back to where she was. “If you need me to sign anything, forget it,” she added. “They made it very clear I’m worth nothing to them. I’m fond of you, Benjamin, but you’re their attorney and we shouldn’t be talking. Goodb — ”

  “Wait!”

  She kept the phone to her ear. He rarely lost his cool, so she waited.

  “It’s about Zaanics.”

  The language. Væyne Zaanics.

  If the language had a face, she would have punched it by now, and she wasn’t a fighter. When her sisters, or anyone else, ganged up on her, her inclination was to run away or curl up in a ball and wait it out until they got bored or until internecine conflict distracted her tormentors. But the language was like another sibling, the most demanding one, and it had taken what little remained of her father’s attention. Gaelen, as the oldest (the tallest, the smartest, the hottest) — and as the chosen steward of the language — got most of it. Cate considered the ambiguity of the very name of the language. The word Zaanics by itself could mean “curse” or “gift”, and for the most part, it had felt like a curse, not unlike her anxiety.

  Cate enunciated every word clearly. “The language is not my problem. I’m not a Lyr anymore, remember?”

  “You kept the name.”

  Damn him for knowing everything.

  “And daddy issues aside, hear me out.”

  “Daddy issues?” She spoke through clenched teeth. C’mon, who didn’t have those, especially her, but to put it like that, considering?

  “Your father disowned you. And you have three older men working for you,” Benjamin pointed out.

  “Exactly, they work for me. How does that translate to daddy issues?”

  “And who was it that indoctrinated you into this field of work?” Benjamin asked. “Was it … an older man?”

  How the hell did he know that? “I don’t need to defend myself to you.” She wouldn’t defend herself to men anymore.

  “Oh, we all have daddy issues,” Benjamin said offhandedly. “You’re in wide company, and I’m certainly no exception. Mine are probably even worse than yours.”

  Benjamin liked to deflect personal questions as lightly as a fly bouncing off a badminton racquet. Cate knew only a little about him, mainly that he came from a WASPy East coast family and appalled all of them when he moved west. She remembered him saying that he told them it was for medical reasons, like he was a consumptive eighteenth-century poet.

  It was dangerous to get sucked into their easy dynamic. “Do you know how hard I worked to get where I am today?”

  “I’m not trying to get in the way of that. But you haven’t kept in touch, with me, or even Noah, though we weren’t part of what transpired.”

  That was a bloodless way of putting it. What could she say that he would understand? It had been necessary to protect herself. Cate paced to the wall by the window where she kept her plants. Soon after she moved in, she accidentally ripped the head off one of them. And though she figured it was done for, the plant started to grow two new heads – the one it lost, and an extra one for good measure. She figured if that plant could move past getting beheaded, then she could reconstitute something she had lost, too.

  “You’ve already gotten in my way,” Cate said. “I live in Istanbul. Does that tell you anything?”

  “It tells me that you have a passport and are, I presume, still paying enough taxes to the United States to prevent the IRS from trying to track you down.”

  She took in a deep breath. “You’ve got one minute.”

  “Although I am no longer your family’s attorney — ”

  “Really? And don’t make me have to say this again: they’re not my family.”

  “Oh, they will always be your family, my darling. And no, I ceased my position as the Lyr family attorney at the ceremony, when your father fired me.”

  “He fired you? For what, speaking up to defend me?”

  “Yes, but you wouldn’t know that, since you never attempted to contact me in all this time.”

  “Oh, excuse me for wanting to get past the worst day of my life.”

  “But I am still responsible for the Zaanics books,” he said in an officious, and — maybe it was her imagination — beleaguered tone. “This is a duty I undertake with the very highest level of care, despite …” He trailed off, and Cate thought, despite what? “On top of that, I have an obligation to both the Lyr and Severn families.”

  She twitched with impatience and leaned toward the screens. “Benjamin, I have a job to do right now. This is how I make money so I can live in a house and buy running shoes and hot sauce and remind myself that I’m alive.”

  She was trying, anyway.

  He exhaled. “And I have paperwork stacked as high as Kilimanjaro. It’s how I make money.”

  Cate raised an eyebrow. “Touché. Go ahead.”

  He paused, then said, “Do you remember when I visited you in the hospital?”

  After her emergency surgery, Benjamin was admitted as a visitor to the ICU by telling the staff he was her attorney. Then he gave her enough cash to buy a plane ticket and pay a couple of month’s rent somewhere with a reasonable cost of living. Specifically, he left an envelope with stern instructions. He must have thought she wouldn’t take it if he gave it to her in person. Then that was it.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Is that what you called about? To remind me of that?”

  “I would never be so crass as to tell you that you owe me — ”

  But yeah, she owed him. She paid Benjamin back that first year, but she would always owe him. She thought of the quote, was it Ennius? In unsure fortune a sure friend is seen. A sure friend. Was there such a thing?

  “However, I think I’ve earn
ed a modicum of attention, so be quiet.” He paused a beat. “I’ve been watching Gaelen since the ceremony. Taking over Lyr Logistics is not enough for her, believe me.”

  Cate laughed. “Stop the presses: Gaelen Lyr is hungry for power!”

  “The presses.” He chuckled. “How superannuated of you. Now stop being so stubborn and listen to me.”

  She waited.

  “She’s been trying to sell the three Zaanics books, or at least some portion of their contents.”

  Cate cocked her head in confusion. “What do you mean she’s trying to sell the contents?”

  “She is having serious discussions with potential buyers, and no doubt will be choosing the highest bidder. Given what I know about Gaelen, that may not necessarily mean the most money.”

  “Gaelen can’t. It’s not — she can’t do that!” Cate wondered why the notion infuriated her. The past, present, and future of the Zaanics books was so intertwined with the family line that they seemed one and the same. Her family wanted nothing to do with her, so she wanted nothing to do with the language.

  “You know she can,” Benjamin said. His voice had an edge of urgency. “She’s the legal steward, but I can’t let her access the rest of them.”

  “But we’re not supposed to access them.” She heard the old Cate in her voice. The Cate who always did the right thing, who followed the rules. But she had to grow someone new, like her plant. “The creators of VZ didn’t want the families to retrieve or translate the books unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and I’m the neutral party who keeps the books for that reason. But Gaelen will sell the information in the books to very bad people, for very bad reasons.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  She pressed a finger between her brows. “Yes.”

  “I have agents. People who work for me in various capacities.” He cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Cate, know that I don’t want you to keep doing what you’re doing. I’d hate to have to visit you-know-where. But I need you to do a job.”