10) War
Breaking and entering had always come easily to Harris Harcourt. Since he'd been thieving and pillaging more than half his life, it came naturally to him now. He'd put it to good use during the war, but now he actually got paid, in real Euros nonetheless, to break and enter someone's lovely, hard-earned home.
Funny, entering this place, one of those mini-mansions so popular in the western outskirts of Bloomington, Illinois. Not too shockingly, the house made his fourth-floor flat in downtown Belfast look sparse and ancient.
Living in war-torn Belfast, helping rebuild it when actually there, was completely different than Bloomington, Illinois. He couldn't imagine a person enjoying living here. The terrain was far too smooth. The horizon was bluntly absent of trees but dotted with the boxy outlines of houses. The grass burned in the August sun, turning what should be green and beautiful into something brown and coarse and hard as sand. That was the biggest disgrace of all. He'd seen droughts enough in Ireland, but the land came back again, rich and bold against a silvery sky. This transformation couldn't happen in a place like Bloomington; it required a magic that America sorely lacked. At least the parts he'd seen.
On the little table in the immaculate foyer, done in pale hues that burned his eyes, he shifted through a table of receipts and bill stubs, spare keys to neighbours' houses, and other random bobbles emptied from pockets. He poked through the living room, not lived in much and he couldn't understand its title at all, until he was in the dinning room. Out the back door was a rather calm view of a bean field, ready for trimming in a duo of months, for the time of crops drew near. Already the second crop of wheat had been taken. . . .
He didn't know what he was doing here. That evaded him up to the moment he stepped into the far corner of the house. The office. Drapes drawn across windows made the small, black-shelled computer difficult to find. He didn't dare turn lights on. Breaking into houses was foolish in and of itself, but even more ridiculous to draw attention to his already suspicious presence. Unable to fake an American accent like his PIUE counterparts drew the attention more than his good looks—unfortunately. Cracking his knuckles and sitting down, he drudged up e-mails and word processing documents, absorbing it all for twenty-six minutes straight. His mobile vibrated in his jeans pocket. Dumbly, he answered.
'Ah, Harcourt. Glad I caught you.'
The phrase had the scent of a pun, considering his circumstances. 'Farrars, what do you need?' Unusual it was for his UIFF contemporary, Dirk Farrars, to call him when the two of them were actually in the same country, but seeing as how three thousand miles separated them, oddity couldn't begin to describe this event. Sometimes the things Farrars did never made sense.
'Progress report,' Farrars said. 'I'm heading over to the O'Shaughnessys' later, and I wanted to know if you'd found anything out about the girl.'
'Not yet, no. I haven't seen her, if that's what you mean.'
'Damn,' swore Farrars. He digested the disappointment rapidly. 'Then what are you doing over there?'
Harris hesitated. The enquiry was a stab in the dark, and Harris knew it, yet there'd always been an eerily keen quality about Farrars, as though he knew things that others, the more natural types, shouldn't.
'I was trying to find her,' Harris answered tentatively. 'Do you realise how hard she is to find?'
'That's precisely why we sent you.'
'I just didn't think it'd be so difficult.' His tone showed too much concern. He hated himself for being a sentimental git when Farrars picked up on it.
'Something else happen?'
'It's my own fault. I started looking into Zeta, as means of freeing Ro. And that's how I got into—trouble.'
'What kind of trouble?'
Harris rubbed his eyes and crowded his jump drive with files and documents off the computer. 'It's not going to be easy getting him cleared, you know.'
'It's not up to us. We're for the girl, when she's ready.'
'I'm starting to think it'll be a lot harder than you and everyone else thinks it'll be, getting her apart from him. In fact, I'm starting to think it'll be impossible.'
'What are you saying?'
'You can't have her without taking Zeta.'
The jump drive full, Harris pulled away from the computers and exited the house. In thirty seconds, Farrars said not a word. Then, eventually:
'I'll talk to Spry about it.'
'You'd better. Wasn't this his idea?'
'Hardly his alone. Everyone wants her back. She belongs here.'
Somewhere, Harris still believed that, too, but the fire he'd felt when he left for this mission had extinguished in the blistering American summer.
'You're right,' Harris finally said in a sigh. 'I know you're right.'
'Good. See what you can do.'
Harris's mouth tightened against the strain and pressure intimated by this stern conversation from one of UIFF's most distinguished liaisons. It resembled being smacked across the cheek by all of parliament. He wondered who'd slap his other cheek when he stopped looking.
The information he'd gathered wasn't decrypted until he returned to downtown Chicago, anonymously tucked into a hotel suite.
One document he thought incorrectly decrypted. He opened it in a traditional program, but surely something must've happened—this couldn't be actual work from a fertile, healthy, intelligent mind.
Could it?
He scrolled down and down and down, the words repeating in single sentences, over and over again, appearing cut and pasted a million times. Repetitively.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end.
It'll never end. . . .