Chasing the Wyrm: Christopher Yan, Office of Arcane Affairs

PART ONE

Top Secret - Eyes Only by Presidential Authority

From the Office of the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman

Executive Order 12334C For the Creation of the Office of Arcane Affairs (OAA)

By virtue of and pursuant to the authority vested in me under the National Security Act of 1947, and of all other authority vested in me, it is hereby ordered as follows:

I. I hereby establish within the Government a new agency, and prescribe its respective function and duties, as follows:

(A) To further U.S. interests in matters of the occult, including those pertaining to (but not excluding) industrial production, economic manipulation, and military and intelligence applications. It shall be the duty of this agency to ensure U.S. superiority in all arcane matters and to protect Americans and their interests at home and abroad from arcane threats.

(B) The Office of Arcane Affairs shall be composed of:

The Secretary of Arcane Affairs

The Director of Interior Affairs

The Director of Foreign Affairs

The Deputy Director of Investigations

The Deputy Director of Commerce

The Deputy Director of Diplomacy

The Deputy Director of Intelligence

(C) The Office Arcane Affairs shall be responsible directly to the President, and be held accountable for providing knowledge on all matters of the occult, and remain vigilant to all threats, reporting them to the President as necessary.

To this end, the Office of Arcane Affairs shall have the following powers and duties:

1. To establish and operate a division responsible for investigating occult threats from within our borders and from our own citizens.

2. To establish and operate a division responsible for research and development of arcane processes which further U.S. economic superiority.

3. With the approval of the President, to act as diplomats to extra-dimensional beings.

4. To establish and operate a division responsible for gathering intelligence on arcane matters from foreign powers, and to conduct espionage and counter espionage using arcane practitioners and means.

Chapter 1

October 19th, 2009

NSA Headquarters has its own exit off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway labeled NSA Employees Only. When you come off the highway, past a screen of trees and hills, you run into a friendly wall of sniper posts and barbed wire. I don't work for the NSA, but I visit often, so they gave me an electronic beacon for my car. When someone without one of these nifty encrypted radio devices takes that exit, a nasty surprise waits for them at the end of the ramp. All of Ft. Mead goes on heightened security alert. It annoys the battalion of Marines that guard the place to no end, and they don't mind taking it out on you.

The base sprawls across the rolling green countryside, but all eyes focus on the sinister, shiny, black boxes, reflecting the massive parking lot that surrounds them, like alien obelisks from a sci-fi movie. The main NSA building consists of two attached structures, one short and long, the other taller and more square, both composed of black mirrored windows. No, not intimidating at all.

I stopped at the security building and smart-looking MPs checked my ID. Christopher Yan, ODNI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that's the head of the entire U.S. Intelligence Community. The picture on the card shows a smiling, half-Chinese, half-American male in his mid-twenties with high cheekbones and a spiky haircut. Perhaps handsome in that skinny-nerd Asian kind of way; I let others be the judge. All I know is that the girls in my high school never made a fuss over me. The guards gave me the once over and waved me in. I was on the guest list.

I gingerly rolled my agency-issued Impala over the tire spikes, and the Marines directed me to visitor parking. Like your average stadium, those parking far enough out need to catch a shuttle to the front door. Visitor parking spared me this indignity. The number of people the NSA employs is classified. The parking lot could accommodate the population of Delaware.

One of the things you'll notice about guys like me, that is, intelligence officers, Special Forces guys, police in high-crime areas, anyone who often finds themselves in the unfortunate position of seeing the people they shoot up-close and personal, is that they are extremely aware of their environment. I don't claim to be a bad-ass in any way, shape, or form, but I do have a knack for knowing where I'm going and where I've been. I remember people and where I've seen them before, and I rarely get lost. I may not work at the NSA, but it's fun to act like I do. I flashed a big smile and gave an enthusiastic good morning to all the receptionists I passed. I stopped to tell Miranda she looked good that day. She's tall and lean, with dyed red hair cut in a bob at the shoulders. She wears glasses and has freckles, very cute and self-conscious. She pretends that I don't impress her.

After chatting up Mirada, I made my way through a maze of corridors to the elevators. I was about ten minutes late, not serious. Johnny waited for me there with a fake scowl. Johnny--and everyone calls him Johnny, but not to his face--looked trim and perfectly coiffed as usual, a nice GQ haircut with gray at the temples. He was wearing one of his impeccable tweeds. He goes to Scotland once a year to see his tailor. He plays golf for a week and has a dozen suits made. I'm very good at Nintendo golf and was told just recently I should be wearing suits to work.

Good morning Chris-to-pher, he said in a lilting tone that only a gay man confident in his sexuality can achieve.

Jonathan Strange holds the title of Chief of Operations, under the Deputy Director of Intelligence, in the Office of Arcane Affairs.

You have never heard of us.

Harry Truman created the Office of Arcane Affairs with a Top Secret Presidential Directive shortly following WWII. Apparently, we got a hold of a lot of Hitler's occult research from the SS Ahnenerbe, officially the division of Ancestral Heritage, but they were the ones looking for Odin's Spear and all that crap. Spielberg didn't make that shit up. They really were looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Just like everything else, it scared the shit out of Truman, and he formed the OAA to research and combat arcane forces for the good of the old' U.S. of A. It wasn't long after, the government found out that wizards walk among us and decided it was prudent to put a few on the payroll. Like Johnny and me.

Later, during the Kennedy administration, we found out that the KGB had some wizards doing a bang-up job as field officers. Not to be undone, Kennedy ordered the OAA to provide trained practitioners in the arcane arts to any intelligence service that asked for one. That's my job. So while technically I work for OAA, I am bitch-boy for anyone under the ODNI. The CIA finds out that al-Qaeda has a guy who bends spoons? Call the OAA. Send Christopher. He can take care of it. ONI has a report of a strange, glowing, giant squid? Hey OAA, can Christopher scuba dive? Nothing worse than spooked spooks who don't have a clue what they're dealing with.

Wizards, however, are not a dime-a-dozen. You get born with the gift - you do not get made. Our reports estimate the odds at about one in a million. That's around 300 wizards total in the U.S. Rarer still, a wizard that the government knows about and can cajole, harass, or coerce into working for them. So you see Johnny can wear anything short of rainbow colored bicycle shorts to work. They need us. This particular economics of scarcity is what saved my bacon in the end, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We rode the elevator to the 7th floor in silence, and followed the twisting corridors to an office tucked into the corner, room 12370. Johnny hit the button for the intercom. James, it's Jonathan Strange.

Jimmy buzzed us in.

The only light in the room came from the computer monitors, about thirty of them. Jimmy sat in the middle of them all, strapped into something that looked like an ultra-modern stainless steel and leather dentist chair. Three keyboards on swivel perches sat within arm's reach. The whole thing could recline and swing about on a track so that the operator could view another monitor, or input on another device, without getting up from his chair. He gave out a, What-up, Topher?

I approached his throne and we went into a minute-long gang handshake, mostly to annoy Johnny. Jimmy looked like he hadn't left his lair in days, which was probably the case. He wore a black stocking cap stitched with a picture of Curious George, a testament to the temperature in the room, maybe about 60 degrees. A t-shirt two sizes too big draped his skinny frame. It said NSFW in large red letters. No glasses though, Jimmy's eyesight decided not to be cliché.

He loves it when I visit. We're the same age, and all the guys in SIGINT/IMINT (signals intelligence/image intelligence) secretly or not so secretly idolize all of us in HUMINT (human intelligence). James Bond is the shit. Jimmy's role is analysis; he combs over data collected from all sources and looks for certain patterns. Those certain patterns being occult activities. It's a grueling, thankless job. The few people in NSA who know what he does think it's kooky or a waste of time at best. We could-- probably should--be going through Jimmy's superior, but Johnny likes his information straight from the horse's mouth. Besides, we treat Jimmy right, and in return he takes care of us. The higher-ups give us the brush off.

Johnny gave an exaggerated sigh to feign his annoyance and to move the meeting along. How have you been, James?

Can't complain. Jimmy shrugged. You know how it is Doc; they keep us shackled in this cave until we dig up somthin' massa' likes.

Well, I like what you showed me yesterday, Johnny said, priming the pump a little. Why don't you tell Christopher about what's going on in Sao Paulo.

Shit, I wish you were my boss, he said to Johnny, and then turned to me. Using a bad Chinese accent he said, The boys from Brazil have sent us something very, very, interesting.

Jimmy let out a strained cough before continuing in his normal voice. We've been working with ABIN, the Brazilian agency. Every year Sao Paulo hosts the finale of the Formula One racing season. Lots of rich Euro-trash and South American bankers flock to it.

Yeah, I follow Formula One, I told him.

Oh, from the tea and crumpets set are you? Anyway, so you know that big wigs and playboys crawl out of their hidey-holes for the event. He turned back to his monitors. You remember Super Bowl XXXV?

Tea and crumpets set, remember? Besides, why should I? He waited for the question. It was all dramatics, but Jimmy likes to tell a story and we let him, since we're his only human contact.

I'm not a football fan either, but the Federal Bureau of Intimidation did something interesting during the game. They set up cameras with the latest in 3-D face recognition software. Faces are like fingerprints, each one is unique. Features can be plotted out into patterns recognizable to a computer and searched through a database. Jimmy was used to explaining the tech to Mr. Flintstone and the rest of his superiors.

They picked out 19 perps in the crowd who had outstanding warrants. They were later scooped up by the Tampa Police. The ACLU went ape-shit about invasion of privacy, and we stopped using it here. Jimmy made quote marks with his fingers, meaning that we just don't tell anyone when we use it in the States.

Police in the UK still use it, he went on, So we teamed up with ABIN and they allowed us to install the system at Interlagos, the race track. We're giving them the bad guys they're looking for, and we're keeping track of international players. Apparently a whole lot of Bond-types are Formula One fans, especially the European guys. I think half of MI-6 is there.

This started to sound sweet. A spring weekend in Brazil watching the race and hob-nobbing, playing friendly spy-vs.-spy with my peers. All in all, not a bad gig. But my dreams of box seats, beautiful women, and expensive cocktails faded with the invasion of my common sense. They would never send me anywhere without a real mission.

Jimmy just kept talking. Of course, we just use ears now. Each person's ear is as unique as a finger print....

I shook my head, Wait a minute, they only opened the track to visitors yesterday. You saying you already found something?

Jimmy smirked. Oh ya. He made a few keystrokes on one of his keyboards and the bio came up on the largest monitor.

Chapter 2

December 18th, 2007

Two years before that face popped up on Jimmy's monitor, I had my first solo mission. They let me take civilian air transport from the U.S. to Manas airport. I arrived at 3:00 AM local time. That would be four in the afternoon for me, but after spending the last twenty-four hours on an airplane, I was wrecked. A wide-awake and chipper Army corporal met me at the terminal and drove me over to the new U.S. base. She started talking as soon as we got in the truck, in that high, expectant kind of voice that's impossible to sleep through. She was probably trying to figure out who the hell I was. Not surprising. I wasn't exactly dressed Army, in a black trench coat, white dress shirt, the tie pulled loose and the top button undone. A toothpick hung out the side of my mouth--very Chow Yun Fat. I wish I could say that I learned my lesson since then, but I still don't excel at blending in. I said not a word to her, partly out of trying to look cool, but mostly because of the jet lag.

She took me straight to my transport, a C-27J Spartan Joint Cargo Aircraft. It's about as comfortable as it sounds. My ass took solace in the fact the flight from Kyrgyzstan to Kabul takes less than an hour. They had the plane idling for me on the runway, and I waved to the corporal as I walked up the ramp. One expects wastefulness from the Army, but having me travel alone in the cavernous cargo plane seemed rather asinine. Maybe the OAA requested I fly alone? Maybe they were afraid I would talk too much, or this was some type of hazing. Riding in the back of an empty plane capable of hauling two Humvees after having very little sleep plays havoc on your nerves. Every sound echoed, and bright lights illuminated every inch of the bare floors and gray, curved walls. Sort of like sensory deprivation. I stood in a daze, marveling a little too long at my predicament. The plane started taking off before I could strap myself into one of the hard plastic seats. Not even a pre-flight safety lecture. Perspiration beaded up on my forehead, thought not from being warm. The place felt like a meat locker. This was the sweat of fear. Things were moving way too fast. I remember wondering if the rest of my life would be like the first day of school. A school where the students and the teachers all carried guns.

Realization sank in. My superiors had provided some me time so I could prepare my magic. I pulled out my favorite magical tool. Old school guys still use wands and crystal balls, all well and good, useful in their own way and inherently symbolic. Me? I use an iPhone - I named it Pete. I'll explain that later. Among other things, I keep an image gallery of arcane ciphers and my favorite incantations in notes. Utilizing magic requires focusing on symbols that tap into the collective unconscious. Wizards meditate on these symbols, sometimes pictures, sometimes words, or even objects, to focus their mind on creating the desired effect. Over the years, they have passed down spells, or preparations that work most of the time. Each wizard is different, however, and wise practitioners customize their spells, using symbols that have personal meaning.

I settled on the basics, spells that give me an edge when shit goes south. One spell gives me a limited form of precognition; I see things coming about a second before they happen, useful for avoiding things like bullets. Second, a spell that allows me to slightly warp the limits of my physical abilities, making me stronger and faster. How much depends on how well I concentrate on the spell, which as a byproduct distracts me from other things--like people about to shoot me with bullets. I train every day, using meditation and other exercises to help me balance between spell concentration and focusing on the task at hand. Not every wizard can do this.

In general, you want to use spells that don't look like magic. The more a spell looks like it conforms to the rules of normal reality the less concentration it takes to maintain. For example, the two spells I mentioned, when observed by a bystander, make it look like I'm just incredibly lucky. Of course, the more I push the limits, the less believable it becomes. Yes folks, now you know, John McClane and Martin Riggs are wizards.

Other types of spells, sometimes referred to as rituals, take longer to cast and require long periods of intense concentration. The payoff being spectacular effects: like teleporting across the planet, or raining down big green balls of flame on your enemies. A wizard can perform maybe one or two of these in a day before their massive violations of the laws of reality cause problems.

Wizards sometimes refer to the kind of spells I use as combat magic. They stick up their noses at it, considering it low-class. True wizards are supposed to be using their magic to contemplate and reveal the Greater Mysteries of the Universe. Not shooting up the bad guys in the name of king and country. To quote my boss, Johnny Strange, You, Christopher, are no wizard. You're a magician.

Stuffy wizards who sit on their asses reading books of occult lore refer to anyone who makes practical use of their magic as a magician, a snide comment meaning we're no better than stage illusionists like Penn & Teller.

It's all dick envy if you ask me. Wizards also don't do what we magicians do because of the risk factor. Not only do they consider themselves too valuable to get shot at, magicians have other complications to worry about. You see, the universe not only watches, it keeps count. If you perform a nice long ritual with a big payoff, and then lay low for a while, the universe looks the other way. If, however, you use magic continuously, like staying unnoticed while infiltrating a secure area, the universe keeps counting. Every time you make a guard look the other way, or cast a shadow across a room, or quickly and quietly fry a camera, you add one more tick on the score sheet. And when God, or Brahman, or whatever the Powers That Be, be, thinks you've pissed on their laws of reality often enough, they give you the big karmic smack-down. We call this the rabbit hole effect. For a time, all of your spells screw up and Murphy hangs his hat on your head, making for a very bad day. Everything goes wrong until the universe decides you've paid your debt. It seems you always go down the rabbit hole at the worst possible moment. This can easily get a magician killed. We prepare for these situations in our training, but there's only so much bad luck you can ride out before it rides you.

The plane bounced off the runway, a distraction that vied to break my spells. They let the fighter jets and other fragile equipment use the paved runway. Transports use the dirt. The pilot took us on a tour of every bump and pothole. I sucked in a deep breath, moving my spells to the back of my mind, a sort of semi-conscious concentration, and waited. A short eternity later the ramp lowered and I strolled out.

The cold wind hit me like a semi-truck and I almost crawled back into the plane. Waiting for me were three battle-scarred Humvees, one mounted with a .50 caliber machine gun. Out of the vehicles came some of the sorriest-looking soldiers I've ever seen. Most had long hair, some had beards, and none of their uniforms matched. Some wore desert camo, others urban, a mish-mosh of military and civilian clothes with no identifying patches, which should have given me a clue. I thought to myself, how did I draw these losers? I should have recognized them, but my previous experience with Delta Force, the Army's elite counter-terrorism unit, was on different terms. They dressed that way to blend in, or at least get respect from the local Muhajadin.

The leader approached while the rest stayed by the vehicles looking alert. He offered no salute. Sir, I'm Staff Sergeant Grachev. My unit's at your disposal.

I admit it went to my head a little. Here I was, a 25-year-old punk kid with a squad of my very own Army guys. Of course, I wasn't really commanding them, they were my escorts, but it kinda felt that way. Much later, I would get to know Grachev and some of the fine men who served with him. If you went looking for the salt of the earth, you need go no further than Delta Force. These guys know the real reason that they fight. They have no illusions about the intentions of politicians and officers. They fight because they can, because they possess the skills other men do not. They fight for the guy next to them, their comrades in arms. My magic makes up for a lot, and I train my ass off, but I will never have the raw combat instinct these men do.

I grinned slightly and gave a nod, trying to keep distractions out. We mounted up and cruised through the streets of