Critical Space ak-5 Page 7

  "Twice this week?"

  "A journalist I know asked."

  Bowles fussed with his necktie, making the knot, if anything, tighter. "Chris Havel?"

  "Read it, have you?"

  "Book's gonna be a bestseller," Gracey said with a grin. "We've all read it. Hot stuff."

  "Why did Havel want to know if you'd been in touch with Drama?" Everything Bowles said came out in the same rapid hush.

  "She wanted to know if I could arrange an interview for her. I couldn't. Are you two saying that Drama's on her way to Manhattan?"

  "We don't know, you believe that?" Gracey's smile grew momentarily brighter. "She could be in the city already, we haven't got a fucking clue. Only thing we know for a fact is that she ain't in this room at this moment, and that's it."

  "Is she on the job?"

  "You saw the crime scene shots, what do you think?"

  "I think she's hunting, but I'd really like it if you told me I was wrong."

  "You're protecting Antonia Ainsley-Hunter starting tomorrow, Drama was in Dallas as of fifteen hours or so ago, give or take a few minutes. Those are facts. Infer what you like from them."

  "What I'm inferring is not something I like," I said.

  "We have no confirmation Drama's hunting, and no evidence indicating that, if she is hunting, she's hunting your principal. Does that help?"

  "Not much," I said.

  Bowles had disconnected his laptop from the LCD projector and was setting the computer inside the briefcase. Finished, he opened the top folder in front of him. The folder was stamped in red ink with some impressive but dull-looking warnings about security violations and national secrets. He removed an eight-by-ten black-and-white and set it out, facing me. I was still seated too far from them to get a good look, and so I got up and moved closer, taking the chair at Bowles's elbow.

  "Have you ever seen this man?" he asked.

  The picture was of a pseudo-military unit of some sort, a group of eight men in a mixture of fatigues and what might have been hunting garb. The men were all white, and ranged in age from early twenties to late fifties, from the looks of them. The figure Bowles was interested in had been circled with red ink. He looked to be six feet tall, perhaps two hundred pounds, with balding hair and a narrow mustache clipped tightly over his lip. In the photograph, all of the men were holding weapons – long guns, either rifles or shotguns – though the man in question appeared unarmed.

  "Who is he?"

  "Have you ever seen him before?" he repeated, with no change in inflection.

  "Not to my knowledge."

  Bowles took back the photograph. I looked at Gracey, who shrugged, as if he didn't know who the picture had been of, either.

  "Who is he?" I asked again.

  "He may be a colleague of hers," Bowles said.

  "You mean another one of The Ten?"

  Bowles finished replacing his things in his briefcase, and Gracey gave his Montblanc a final twirl before nesting it in his breast pocket. It was clear neither was going to give me anything more.

  "Tell me you're on top of this situation," I said. "That you're doing your best to locate her."

  "We're on top of the situation, and we're doing our best to locate Drama." Gracey's smile dropped away and the expression he was offering now was veering dangerously close to sympathy. "You do what you do for Ainsley-Hunter, and you let us know if you hear from our lady friend or anything like that, all right?"

  "That's it?"

  "We're finished, at least for now. Nothing more we can tell you, and apparently you've got nothing you can tell us. If Drama appears on your radar, tell Special Agent Fowler – he'll let us know. Otherwise just keep your head down and your back to a wall."

  Gracey got to his feet. Bowles hesitated a moment longer, then reached across the table, offering me his hand. I looked at it, then at him, wondering if he thought this had really been worth a handshake.

  After another second, Bowles refracted his hand, gathered his things, and followed Gracey out the door. Before he stepped out he looked back to where I was still seated.

  "Sorry," he said.

  It sounded to me like an honest condolence for my failings.

  Chapter 7

  Natalie was in her office, flipping through the stack of location photographs we'd taken over the last few weeks, checking them against our maps. I entered without knocking.

  "Call Dale and Corry, get them here now," I told her.

  My look as much as my tone kept her from asking the obvious question, and I went back to my office without another word, making straight for my phone. I tried calling Moore at home and got his machine, left a message for him to contact me. Then I tried his cell phone and got his voice mail, so I left the same message again. I was hanging up as Natalie came in.

  "What happened?"

  "I'd rather wait until everyone's here."

  "Is this about Lady Ainsley-Hunter?"

  "Wait until they're here, Nat."

  She looked around the office, then said, "I'll order dinner."

  "That'd be good."

  "By the way, Bridgett called."

  "What'd she say?"

  "I'll wait until they're here, I think."

  We glared at each other, and I realized I was being a prick. I also realized that my stomachache had sent colonists up to my head to see if they could get some action of their own started.

  "As of eight minutes past midnight this morning, central standard time, Drama was in Dallas, Texas," I said. "She killed three men at a storage facility, and in all likelihood armed herself with the weapons they kept there."

  Natalie lost her voice for a second, her mouth opening slightly but no sound following.

  I knew what she was trying to ask. I said, "I saw the photographs. There's no confirmation that she's coming here."

  "But she could be."

  "It's possible. I think it's unlikely."

  She kept staring at me. After a second I saw that her look wasn't actually fixed on me, but had slipped to a side, and was focused past my shoulder.

  "What?" I asked.

  "The blinds are open."

  I turned around and looked out the window behind my desk, realized just how exposed my back had been to the world. From my view, there were easily dozens of perches where a sniper could roost and take a shot into the office. I felt the edges of panic returning, the same feeling that had clung to me in the first days after Drama had vanished. The urge to hide under my desk was suddenly powerful.

  "She's not after us," I told Natalie.

  "There's this book, you may have heard of it. It's on display in store windows and people are talking about it on the radio and it's all about this professional assassin and these protection specialists who stopped her from killing a man."

  "It doesn't make sense that she would be after us."

  "Shut the blinds, Atticus."

  "She's being sloppy, she let herself be photographed in Dallas, and she's better than that. She knew the camera was there, she had to have known."

  "Everything she does, she does for a reason, and she's got a reason to come after us now. We have to call Havel."

  "Why would Drama let us know she was on the move? She had to have known we'd find out. She can't be after us or Chris. She can't be after our principal."

  "She loves games, Atticus." I heard Natalie shift on the carpet, and her voice stayed soft, but her words started accelerating. "Shut the blinds. My paranoia, I know that. Yours is cars, mine is snipers, and I'm asking you please, Atticus, shut the goddamn blinds now."

  I stared out the window, using one hand to shield my eyes from the sunset. Nothing that looked like someone who wanted to kill me leaped out from in or on the surrounding buildings. Below, the Holland Tunnel traffic was writhing its way to and from Jersey.

  "For God's sake…"

  I closed the blinds and turned back. Setting sunlight ran through the slats that covered the window, cutting the shadows in the room with narrow strips o
f orange and gold. Natalie had moved out of the doorway, and her expression surprised me. I'd known her a long time, and I'd seen most of her emotions – the ones she was willing to wear on her face, at least – and I had seen her nervous, I'd seen her worried, I'd even seen her afraid. But I'd never seen her terrified.

  "It's all right, Nat."

  "No, it isn't. We can't do it again."

  "She's had a year. Why now? If it's the book, then why now, when she can't do anything to stop it?"

  "We should have canceled. We have to call Moore."

  "I tried reaching him, I left messages. We'll be fine."

  She regarded me with the fondness one normally reserves for an exceptionally naive child. "You're crazy, Kodiak."

  "Yeah, but it's that good, devil-may-care, rides-his-motorcycle-in-the-rain crazy," I said. "This is no different than what we were dealing with earlier today, it's the same situation as with Keith. It's circumstantial evidence, nothing more, and it can't keep us from doing our job."

  She shook her head. "You can't compare the two, it's not the same at all, Atticus. Keith is apotential stalker. And we don't even know if he's prone to violence. But a professional killer – we know what she's capable of, we've seen her work."

  "An assassin is just a stalker who is better at his job, Nat. And at least with Keith there's evidence proving an obsession with Lady Ainsley-Hunter, if not an intent to do violence. With Drama we don't even have that. I don't believe that Drama is after us, and I don't believe that Drama is after Lady Ainsley-Hunter."

  Her jaw flexed. "Then why did the CIA feel it necessary to inform you she was in the country?"

  It was a question I'd already asked myself, and since I didn't know the answer, I brushed past it, saying, "It doesn't matter. We muddle through, we stick with what we're good at, we protect our principal. If worse comes to worst, we'll shoot a lot of people."

  "Or get shot a lot ourselves." She closed her eyes, willing herself to relax, and when she opened them again the last hints of her fear had vanished. "You are crazy, you realize that, don't you?"

  "I have never argued that point," I replied. "What did Bridgett say when she called?"

  "She's on her way to Philadelphia to interview Keith's brother. She said she'd call later if she found out anything of use."

  "Okay, good. See? We're on top of this."

  "Oh, yeah, we're all over it." She moved back to the door, then stopped. "Sorry about that."

  "Ain't no thing. She scares the crap out of me, too."

  She frowned and went into her office. I headed for the conference room. It was dark in there, and I closed the blinds before switching on the lights.

  ***

  Dale and Corry arrived at six-twenty, apologizing.

  "Weekend traffic," Dale told me. "You'd swear they put these drivers on the road just to annoy me."

  "Or worse," Corry said. "I thought he was going to run one guy off the road."

  "I could have done it, too." Dale puffed out his chest boastfully. "I know how."

  "Yes, we're very proud of you, Speed Racer," I told him. "Conference room, if you please. We've ordered dinner."

  I waited until they had gone down the hall, then doubled back to the front and locked the door and switched on the alarm. My belief that Drama wouldn't be coming after us was sincere, but the precaution seemed wise all the same, although if she were coming here, our security system wouldn't do much more than annoy her.

  Natalie caught my eye when I joined them, and I nodded. Dale and Corry were already seated, digging into Thai food that had been delivered just before they arrived. Natalie was putting the finishing touches on the diagram she was drawing on the dry-erase board, a map of the route we'd take from the street into the Edmonton Hotel, through the kitchen and to the elevator banks. Other maps were spread out on the table, held down with the paper containers of tomyum gai and nue gra pao. Photographs and notes were tacked to the corkboard and taped to the walls.

  Corry slid me a soda, saying, "Okay, so why the rush?"

  I popped the top, watching the whiff of carbon dioxide that escaped when the seal was broken. "Fowler took me to see the Backroom Boys again this afternoon."

  "You learn any cool code names?" Dale asked.

  "No new ones."

  The sounds of eating stopped.

  "Oh fuck me," Corry said.

  They took it better than either Natalie or I had done, I thought. Maybe they just did a better job of hiding the fear. Neither of them interrupted me as I repeated what Bowles and Gracey had said.

  When I was finished, the debate began as to what we were going to do with this new information, and how we should best proceed. Once more, the question of aborting the op came up, this time voiced by Corry.

  "It may be too late," I said. "I tried reaching Moore when I got back here, and all I managed was to leave him messages that haven't been returned. They're already in transit, either on the way to Heathrow or already in the air."

  "So we boomerang them when they land," Dale said. "Head to the airfield as planned, just don't let them off the plane."

  Natalie said, "Which would be a sound thing to do if Drama is after Lady Ainsley-Hunter."

  "You don't think she is?" Corry asked.

  I said, "I think the primary threat against her is still Keith. All we know about Drama is that she was in Dallas this morning, that she murdered three men. Extrapolating that she's after our principal – or us – is alarmist."

  "We are talking about one of The Ten," Dale said. "And Drama has reason to be pissed off. Havel's book is everywhere."

  "She doesn't care about the book."

  "You can't know that."

  "You think we're overreacting?" Corry asked me.

  "I'm not saying we shouldn't worry. But I think we have to put this in perspective, we have to go back to what we know."

  "And we know Keith has a thing for Lady Ainsley-Hunter," Corry said.

  Dale made a face. "Anything new on that end?"

  "Waiting to hear from Bridgett. But we're going to proceed as before on that. No change."

  I cleared the remaining food from the table, moving it to the fridge in the coffee room, where I prepared another fresh pot of coffee. Back in the conference room we chased theories about Drama and Keith for a while longer and then, from a little after seven until almost eleven, we went over the plans we'd already drawn up, honing the final details. I set the stand-by call for six the next morning, when we would all gather at the office before heading out to the airport in New Jersey for Ainsley-Hunter's arrival. The four of us together took down all of the paper we had up in the conference room, and while Dale went to store it in the safe and I cleaned the dry-erase board, Corry and Natalie went off to the storeroom. They returned with four vests.

  "Kevlar," Corry said, handing one to me. "The gift that keeps on giving."

  ***

  I did a walk-through of the apartment when I got home just after midnight, switching on lights and checking rooms, trying to remember if the mess I was seeing now was the same mess I'd left behind that morning. Bridgett, I had discovered, was a surprisingly sloppy person, constantly leaving out books and papers and CDs, though the clothes that she kept in my bedroom were always neatly folded and stowed. Between the near-constant work I'd been doing preparing for Lady Ainsley-Hunter's visit and Bridgett's natural entropy, there was a lot of picking-up that needed doing.

  Even so, everything looked to be in its place. I got out of my jacket and then the vest, hanging both from the hook in the hallway before entering the bedroom and stowing my weapon in its lockbox. I rummaged through the drawers in the kitchen until I found the set of tiny screwdrivers that I kept for repairing my glasses. Armed with the largest of the flatheads, I worked my way from room to room, dismantling every light switch cover and electrical outlet, checking them all for bugs. When we'd protected Pugh, Drama had bugged the apartment with a mains-powered transmitter hidden in an outlet in the kitchen, the one I used to run the
coffeemaker. I doubted the same technique would be used twice, but I wanted to be sure.

  I didn't find anything but some mouse droppings and one desiccated spider husk.

  After I'd finished with the outlets, I sat down at the kitchen table to start with the phones, then stopped when I caught a glimpse of my hands. My fingernails were chewed and chipped from wrestling with the outlets, and I'd scraped the knuckle of my right middle finger groping around inside the wall. These days, there are hundreds of ways to monitor and intercept phone calls, be they cellular or landline, and almost none of them requires that the device be planted on scene. There wasn't really a point to taking apart the phones: If there was a bug and I removed it, that wouldn't guarantee my calls would be secure; if there wasn't a bug, it didn't mean that the line wasn't being intercepted somewhere farther down the pipe.

  The answering machine finally caught my attention while I was debating with myself, and I saw that there was a message waiting. I was about to play it, when the phone rang.

  "You're still awake," Moore said when I answered. "What's with all these messages?"

  "You on an open line?" I asked.

  "Yes. If we need to be secure this'll have to wait."

  "No point."

  "I'm assuming there have been developments in our situation?"

  "Yeah. Your girlfriend with you?"

  "She's nearby, out of earshot, but she's moving about. What's happened? You find more about Keith?"

  "Not about Keith, no," I said, and then laid out the situation with Drama as succinctly as I could. If she truly was listening in, she'd at least be amused.

  "Where's this coming from?" Moore asked when I finished. He didn't sound all that concerned, more annoyed.

  "Company men."

  "Odd."

  "In a word."

  "No, I mean that doesn't match with what I've got. I checked with Interpol and the people I know at Six before leaving, and they gave me a pointer, but it wasn't about our lass Drama. They say there's another one on the move, a bloke they've named Oxford, they think he's in the States, somewhere on the East Coast. Don't know if he's hunting, just that he's been moving about."