Tuesday December 5 2006
07:42 MT
Boulder
Rolling from his bedroom into the hallway, Colby nearly collided with his assistant as she came out of the bathroom. "Uh, sorry."
"Sokay." She was dressed and made up for the day, in IO uniform, ready for the trip to Central. She looked him over with concerned eyes. "Are you okay?"
"Restless night," he said. "Should have gone full decaf." Anne's call had given him a great deal to think and worry about. He'd done just that for hours, staring out the window as the falling snow thickened the blanket already on the ground. He had finally nodded off, only to have his alarm go off seemingly an instant after he closed his eyes.
"It snowed last night," she said. "Just a foot. The service already plowed the driveway and cleaned the walks, but the roads might be tricky. Are you sure you want to go in?"
If things were as bad as his runaway imagination had painted them last night, they might be waiting for him at headquarters. No, actually, if things were that bad, they'd have come for him already. "I've got people to see." Not that the person he most needed to see would be there. Anne had recited the number of her mysterious caller, and, though Colby had never called it, it had looked familiar, and he had felt a sick certainty that he would find it on his phone.
Save this number in your directory, it's my personal. You'll want to call me before long.
There was only one place that Nicole Callahan could reasonably have gotten hold of Anne Devereaux's trace-proof phone number, and one opportunity. Dear God, what else had he told her that night while he was out of his head? And why hadn't she told her bosses already?
"I didn't call for the car," she said. "I know you said you'd set your alarm for seven, but I wasn't sure how soon you'd be up and ready. Or if you might change your mind."
"I'll do it then." First he called the shift commander of the bodyguard team presently on duty outside – a man who answered to Gordon Phillips, but unlike Gordon wasn't part of Colby's circle of trust. Colby got a perfunctory status report and requested his car be sent out from Central; being technically a pool car, the customized vehicle was garaged at headquarters, rather than at Colby's house, even though he was the only staffer who used it. He was sure that when it arrived, Gordon and one of his picked men would be in it. He wouldn't discuss anything confidential in an Agency pool vehicle, or anywhere with Cheryl present, but he'd arrange a meeting later at a more secure spot.
Why had Nicole called Anne? And then hung up without speaking? Was this her way of letting them all know that she had the number? To what purpose? Was she making a threat, or perhaps goading her quarry into a mistake?
Or maybe there was something else. What else had the call accomplished, besides giving them her number… He shook his head at the ludicrousness of the idea. Why in God's name would Nicole want to give Lynch's people her phone number?
He was going to have to talk to her. Dare he wait until she got back? If not, what could he say to her over an unsecured line, even if Lynch's little gadget ensured that nobody with a bug on him would overhear the conversation? Did IO monitor Nicole's phone traffic?
"Frank? Are you-"
"Hm? Sorry, thinking."
"I said, do you need me to set up any appointments?"
"No, I'll make my own phone calls when I get there. Do we have any unfinished business on the table?"
"Not once I get these reports filed. After that, we're waiting for debriefs from Mannheim and Vientiane. Do you think there's time for coffee before the car gets here?"
He smiled. "Do I look like I need it that bad?"
"Honestly, you really do."
"Coffee can wait till we're in the office. Then I may send you on some errands."
She started to ask, but changed her mind. "Okay."
But forty minutes later, on their arrival at Central, the news about Vientiane reached them, and all Colby's plans changed.
McLean Virginia
1:00 PM ET
"How long is this going to take?" Santini asked.
Christie shifted in the rearward-facing seat of Santini's limo, facing her boss. "That depends on how skeptical you're going to be. And how many questions you ask."
They were speeding westward down 267, the Dulles toll road, toward the private aviation section of the airport and Santini's waiting G150. The limousine, once Miles Craven's personal conveyance, was eerily smooth and silent, the scenery seeming to pass by as if on a television screen. No doubt the weight of the armor and the massive suspension helped level the ride, Christie thought.
Santini regarded her for a moment. "The airport is only twenty minutes away. The flight to Boulder is about four hours. Sounds like you're coming with me, Blaze."
She let out a breath. "I thought I was just going to brief you on the way to the airport. I didn't pack."
"I'm not staying at Central a minute longer than I have to," he said. "You might be back here by bedtime. If not, I'm sure you can pick up a toothbrush and a change at the X."
"We could start now," she said, feeling desperate. "Maybe it won't take that long."
He gave her a hard look. "You go to Central every month," he said. "What's the problem?"
"I really don't think that either of us should go to Central right now." She hesitated, then plunged in. "There's talk about Nicole Callahan taking a sudden interest in Frank Colby. Nobody's sure what she's after, or if she knows something."
He scoffed. "This would have been good to know a little earlier."
"I'm sorry. We just didn't have much time earlier, and the other stuff just sort of crowded it out."
He settled back into the deep cushions. "All right. The hidden cache. Make your case. Alicia's, rather."
She looked out the passing scenery for a moment. "It starts with the service logs of the vehicles in the motor pools," she said. "As you know, no vehicle enters the security perimeter of any IO facility unless the Shop owns it. It's quite a fleet – IO even has its own boom trucks, cement mixers and earth moving equipment. Security on those records is pretty low-level, but Alicia thought that, if she could get something like a regular schedule of visits and deliveries to the various Research facilities, she might be able to exploit it.
"Turns out though, aside from groceries, traffic at the sites is pretty random. There are patterns, but they don't last. Alicia thinks they're generated by individual research projects, and disappear when those projects conclude. That led her to think she might determine who was likely to receive whatever the trucks were bringing, if she can figure out who was at the facility and what project they were assigned to. She's still a ways from laying hands on a TO for the research facilities, but she's making progress. The actual projects are impossible to discover, but personnel assignments and transfers from one to another require paperwork."
"That all sounds head-numbingly boring," Santini said.
"It's what intelligence work is like, boss. Sometimes an op can succeed or fail depending on knowing whether a particular office uses staples or paper clips."
"Yeah, well, like Einstein said, if I need a mathematician, I can hire one."
She forbore to remind him that she had, not long ago, spent seven months in central Europe doing nothing but gathering raw intel, an assignment that had eventually led to the current operation in Mannheim. "Einstein was a mathematician, boss. I think it was Edison who said that. Anyway. She went years back into the records - some of those vehicles only leave the barn once or twice a year, and they're real museum pieces. She studied the mileage records of the individual vehicles, matching them to their usage logs, trying to see if certain vehicles or drivers frequented particular sites. And she noticed something odd about some of the records back in the Eighties and Nineties. The mileage on the service and maintenance accounts for some of those vehicles didn't match the known round-trip distances to the sites they were logged as having visited."
"Extra miles?"
"Right. Mostly shuttle vehicles and small trucks. Nothing you'd take for a joy ride. Alicia thinks the vehicles sometimes were given more than one stop; that would be easier and less suspicious than sending them through the gates without logging them in and out. The vehicles came from different depots, so Alicia thinks she might be able to work some math voodoo on the numbers and sort of triangulate an approximate location."
"And how does a PsyOps specialist know how to do math voodoo?"
"She doesn't, sir. Like you said, when you need a mathematician, you can hire one." She added, "We still have analysts at McLean, good ones. We could do this in-house. It would just mean bringing someone else into…"
"Into our little conspiracy." He settled back into the cushions as the vehicle passed through the airport's huge parking area. "Does she have someone in mind?"
"No, sir. She says she could compile a list of candidates, but she doesn't know who might be trusted."
"You've been 'sirring' me a lot the past few minutes, Blaze."
"It's got to be you, sir."
"Well, hell, of course it does. Looks like you're flying with me anyway. Get the list and the data from her in Boulder while I deal with Ivana and this clusterfuck in Vientiane."
Five hours later, a small delegation met Christine and Santini in the underground garage's elevator lobby: Frank Colby; Cheryl, in IO uniform standing behind him, and a slightly heavyset man, in suit and tie, that Christie didn't recognize. The wheelchair-bound man offered a hand. "Ben. Good to see you. Wish the circumstances were better."
Santini clasped the offered hand firmly. "Well, bad times don't last forever, kid. Speaking of which, you're looking good. How soon are you going to be out of that chair?"
"We should know in a couple more months. Ben, this is Gerry Ruche, the Director's Security Adviser."
Santini took Ruche's offered hand. The man's used-car-salesman smile disappeared as Santini squeezed. Staring into the man's eyes, the Associate Director said, "Security Adviser. That's a new title. What, exactly, do you do for Ivana?"
"It's something of a catch-all title," Gerry said, voice slightly strained. He grimaced and tugged his hand, but Santini held fast.
"I hear you've got a sizeable group of men under arms in-house, separate from my boys." The man's voice was mild, but Gerry winced, presumably from a little added pressure. "And Ivery's," he added. "What do you use them for?"
"Oh, just, bodyguard duties. Escort work. Sometimes they accompany shipments to the caches. Routine stuff."
Santini let go, finally. "I assume they're cleared for Genesis."
"To some extent." Gerry touched the elevator button – with his left hand, Christie noted. "They're not briefed in on the whole story." He glanced at Christie.
"One of my people," Santini said. "Christine Blaze." A momentary lift of the Security Adviser's brows and a look of fresh appraisal told Christie that the man already knew more about her than she was comfortable with. Did he know her status as an Expeditionary? If so, he almost certainly knew the backstory to her unique status. She felt a touch of heat at her ears, thinking that the man was probably imagining her and Jack together.
Fortunately, he didn't offer his hand; perhaps he didn't practice such courtesies with underlings, or maybe his hand was just tender. He smiled. "I think I might have seen you at the range. Do you come here often?"
Oh, God, he isn't. She willed herself not to roll her eyes, instead glancing down at his left hand: no ring, but that didn't prove anything. She said, "As often as I need to. What Directorate are you in, Mister Ruche?"
"I'm not actually assigned to a Directorate, though my duties often lead me to work in all of them. I report directly to Director Baiul."
"I see."
The light above one of the elevators lit, and its doors opened. Santini said, "Shit, that's a dinky elevator. Gerry, I'm a little claustrophobic. Would you mind catching another one? Blaze, wait with him, will you?" He moved into the car behind Cheryl and Colby and stood just inside, blocking further entry.
Unseen by the Security Adviser, Christie gave her chief a dirty look. "Sure thing, Boss," she said pleasantly.
Colby said, "Cher?"
"I was about to ask," she said, stepping out of the elevator. "I'll catch up with you upstairs."
The car bumped gently and began to rise. Colby reached into his pocket. Without taking it out, he turned on his masking device. "We can talk. Just keep your head turned forward and to the left, like you're watching the indicator panel, so the camera can't see your lips move." He didn't expect Santini to say anything damaging, but they were all stressed right now, and in a place where a slip could have grave consequences; best not to take too many chances.
"All right," Santini said. "What's her play?"
"She's probably going to want to take the Twelves away from you."
"Fuck that. Those are my people. She's done enough to them."
"Craven did it to them. She was just part of the research," Colby reminded him. "But she needs Genactives for Ivery's research program. The Elevens… well, nobody at Central would trust an Eleven with a lit match, even the ones that haven't been committed to custodial status. They wear collars twenty-four seven. Some of them are escorted everywhere from the moment they come out of their rooms, and they don't leave the complex under any circumstances. So the Twelves are all they've got to work with. We're not having much luck reacquiring the Thirteens, as you know."
"As everybody damn well knows." The indicator light was one floor shy of their destination. "Is Vientiane as bad as she told me?"
Colby said, "It's bad. I doubt she exaggerated. She wouldn't need to."
"Okay." The number for their floor lit up. He said. "Before I leave, we need to talk about Nicole."
"Later, Ben," he said. "Maybe at the house."
The elevator car stopped and the door slid open. Colby disengaged his device and rolled through the door.
Santini said, "You don't need that girl pushing you around."
"Gives her something to do with her hands," he said. "She tends to hover. She's a good kid, but she has orders from Ivana to keep an eye on me." The two of them stood in front of the elevators for about a minute until the doors opened on the car carrying Christie, Cheryl and Ruche.
Gerry stepped out and hurried to join them without waiting for his companions. Cheryl grinned at her boss for an instant as she approached to take the handles of his chair. Christie made no move to leave the elevator car. The big blonde's face was impassive as she watched Ruche's receding back. Santini raised his eyebrows at her, and she moved her head minutely from side to side before the elevator doors closed on her.
Ruche said, "She's not coming with us?"
"She's got other business," Santini said. "And frankly, she doesn't need to hear it."
In time, they arrived at the paneled doors of the executive conference room. Colby said, "I'll take it from here, Cher. Go make sure the office is ready for visitors. I'll call when we're done here."
Santini pushed one door open and held it for him, entering behind. The Associate Director said, "I almost forgot how depressing this place was."
Ivana, in her usual seat at the head of the long black table, said, "Benito, are you going to play the boor through this whole meeting? We have important things to discuss."
Colby eyed the attendants and the seating arrangements. Ben Ivery and Matt Callahan were already present and seated near Ivana's end of the table, not shoulder-to-shoulder but with a single empty chair between. Ruche moved to an empty seat at Ivana's right hand. That left two places already set up with open laptops, water glasses and steno pads: one not far from Ivana's left hand, which already had the office chair removed so that Colby could easily access it, and another at the other end of the long table.
Santini scoffed at the remaining seat, sitting at which would make him appear isolated and oppositional, far from the decision making. He dropped into an unoccupied seat right next to Ruche, making the man jump. "Let's get this show on the road."
"I think everyone is briefed in on developments at Vientiane the last twenty-four hours," she said, unperturbed. "Does anyone feel a need to recap, or can we move forward?"
"I know you're a busy girl, Ivana," Santini said. "Let's not waste time."
Ruche shifted in his seat, plainly uncomfortable. Ivery flicked an impassive glance from Santini to Ivana, apparently having shared a room with the two before. Matt's gaze never wavered, focused on the Associate Director like a guard dog waiting for a stranger to make a sudden move.
"All right," she said, unperturbed. "I didn't call this meeting to discuss Vientiane per se. It's a messy situation, certainly, but at least the Expeditionary Team serviced the target before Braddock went postal. It's a public relations challenge, but fortunately it happened on the other side of the world in a country most Americans couldn't find on a map. No one over there has a good explanation for what happened, really, and that can work in our favor. It shouldn't be too hard to get a few key witnesses who have trouble believing what they saw to remember things a little differently. We'll talk to a few officials and spread some money around, and things will heal over." She met Santini's eyes in a mutual exchange that excluded everyone else in the room. "But this incident makes clear that it's time for the Twelves to retire from the field."
"You're not going to put my people in cages, Ivana," he said. "And you'd better not be thinking of putting them down. They don't react well to people trying to kill them."
She smiled and shook her head. "Ben. Why do you always think the worst of me? Those men have worked miracles for us. But they're long past the age when most soldiers hang up their guns and leave the cowboy operations to younger men." Her stare hardened. "We know that Series Twelve Specials suffer breakdowns from the overuse of their abilities. We know the effect is cumulative. It's just a matter of time before this happens again. And while it may be fairly easy to cover in Vientiane, it would have been far less so in, say, Mannheim, an operation we've spent more than two years setting up. I want those people out of field work before they become more liability than asset."
She leaned back in the high-backed office chair. "I know how much you still depend on them, Ben. I'm not averse to letting you expand your team roster to help make up for the loss of your twelve Specials. I know you have a backlist of candidates, it shouldn't be too hard to replace them, and even build a few more teams." Her eyelids drooped. "You've complained more than once about how unethical their transformation process was, and what it cost them. Think of this as an opportunity to give them a more normal life."
"A more normal life. You want to explain that?"
Ivery spoke for the first time. "There are a number of options, Benito. I'm sure some of them would be useful trainers, for example. Just because they're withdrawing from field operations doesn't mean they can't still be your people.
"If they want to get out of the rough-and-tumble entirely, we can move them into Administration. There are slots." He turned a meaningful eye on Colby. "They wouldn't be the first, and I'm sure they'd be as good at it as they want to be." He smiled at Santini. "Or they can simply retire. Some of them have families. Maybe they'd like to spend more time with them. Not being regularly called on to use their special talents may stabilize their mental affliction, or at least slow its progression. And possibly they have other interests beyond covert operations." He smiled. "Maybe they'll pick up golf."
"And?" Santini leaned back, mimicking Ivana, and folded his arms. "I know a sales pitch when I hear one. You haven't gotten to the once-in-a-lifetime offer or the easy payment plans yet."
"Nothing too onerous. I'd like some volunteers as research subjects. I'm not talking about the sort of things we had to do with the Thirteens, or even what we've done with the Elevens and Twelves whose minds have slipped away. Just some data collection and non-intrusive experimentation. The worst thing we would do to them would be to make them keep a journal. We simply need to know more about what we've created, Ben. If we knew more, we might even be able to avoid losing them."
"Volunteers."
Ruche put in, "There'll be a bonus."
"Bonus," he scoffed. "And what if you don't get any volunteers?"
A short silence followed. Ruche leaned forward, as if about to speak again, but Doctor Ivery spoke first. "I really don't think we're going to have a problem with that, Ben," Ivery said. "Not when they find out we're looking for a way to keep them from going insane." He went on, "I don't think you realize yet how much this incident has shaken them. None of them wants to end up like Braddock." At Santini's stubborn look he pressed on, "God's sake, man. He started babbling about spaghetti and meatballs, and then went walking down a crowded market street, killing everyone he saw. He just looked at them, one after the other, and they dropped dead. Sixty-three people – men, women, kids. I think it was a minor miracle that his teammates were able to shut him down without one of them ending up dead."
Ivana's fingertip tapped the table's chrome-shiny black surface. "I'd very much like you to sign off on this, Ben." Not that I need your permission, her eyes said. "It's best for everyone involved, I'm certain."
Santini didn't like it – not because the proposal was unreasonable, but because it was Ivana's. She and the weasel at her elbow looked entirely too satisfied – Ruche looked positively smug – as if they still held cards they hadn't laid on the table. But he couldn't deny that an honorable retirement was better for them than letting them all go slowly batshit in the field.
Twenty-odd years ago, IO's secret Gen-factor experiments had turned roughly half his foreign-ops force into horror-movie paranormals. Of those fifty-four men, he now had just thirteen who weren't dead, crazy, or gone missing. Correction, he thought, twelve now. They did their jobs in service to their country – at least, that was what they believed – and did them well, but he knew that they were watching one another, even though they pretended not to, wondering which of them would be next. Although trusting Ivana Baiul was a bad habit he had overcome long ago, the Associate Director relented. "You just make sure you give them everything you promise them. No fine print, no changes."
"Of course. You'll be invited to review all the arrangements, if you like."
"Damn straight. How soon do you plan to implement this?" How much time would he have to talk to them, give them warning, make sure they knew they could contact him if the arrangement went sideways?
"It's already done."
The temperature in the dark room seemed to drop. Matt Callahan's eyes were on him like a Doberman waiting for a command to attack. "What do you mean, it's done?"
"I've already had people contact the Twelves still in active service and explain things."
"In the field?" Most of those men were presently staging all over Europe, preparing for the biggest covert 'cleanup' operation IO had ever undertaken - bigger even than the Newtown arms dealer purge. This time, the targets were the leadership of a growing covert freelance intelligence organization, rather like IO but smaller in scale and lacking its research arm and wealth. Originally a CIA project started back in the Sixties to 'stabilize' the governments of its NATO allies, it had gone rogue, adopting its own rules and goals, and had become something of – well, not a rival, but certainly a nuisance. They would never have IO's reach and power, but they were beginning to imagine themselves in that role, at least in the part of the world where they operated, and were complicating IO's operations in Europe. Ivana had decided, early in her career as Director, that the working environment in Europe needed some simplification.
But in order to strike the scattered targets all at once with no warning, the X-teams assigned to the task had to stay dark and quiet until it was time to move. A large part of the planning had gone into finding ways to put them close to their targets yet unnoticed. If Ivana's little stunt had compromised any of those men, the operation would fail, and might even result in the deaths of some of them. "Some of those men are engaged in the biggest and riskiest op in their careers."
"And now they know that Mannheim will be their last operation," she said, unperturbed. "A fitting finale, don't you think? They were offered their choices, and they've already made them. Three will join the training cadre at McLean, subject to your approval. I imagine you'll need them, to handle all the new trainees. Four of them are going to take retirement, and we wish them all the best. And five have volunteered for testing and research with Dr. Ivery." She smiled at Colby. "Sorry, Frank, none of them wanted an administrative position, especially once they learned it would require a move to Central."
"Perfectly understandable. I didn't want one either," Colby said. "Lynch talked me into it."
Ivana's sunny mood seemed to flicker for a moment. "Well. Benito, I'll make sure you leave here with the pertinent details. Before we wrap up, can we get an update on the operation at Fort Worth?"
Ivana closed the meeting fifteen minutes later. "Benito, are you leaving tonight or tomorrow? I imagine your pilots would appreciate a night's rest. You needn't spend the night in some dreary airport hotel. We can open some rooms for you and your adjutant here at Central, if you like."
"Director Santini is staying over at my place," Colby said.
Ivana's eyebrows rose. "Are you sure? Your house is a three-bedroom, as I recall. And I thought your adjutant was spending nights there already."
"We'll manage."
Her lashes lowered. "As you say."
Christie was waiting in the anteroom. Santini said, mindful of the mikes and cameras that he was sure infested this place, "Meet up with your friend?"
"She can't talk right now," she said. "Maybe tonight." She stepped behind Colby's chair and placed her hands on the handles. "Give you a push, Director?"
"Yes, thanks." Colby could have gotten himself there, and in fact would have preferred to, but he chose to play the invalid under the eye of Central's cameras. "Do you remember the way to the office?"
She smiled down at him. "I remember the way to your old office better, but I think so." She steered him toward the nearest bank of elevators. "Once I'm inside your new office, that's when I get lost."
Santini eyed the elevators, now somewhat busier than before. "What happened with you and Ruche on the way up?"
"He said some things, I said some things," Christie said. "It's nothing."
"We're spending the night at Frank's house," Santini said. "I'll take the couch."
"That won't be necessary, Ben."
"Not wanting to beat the point in with a hammer, but four people, three bedrooms. Unless you're about to surprise me."
"Cher has a place here. She doesn't use it much anymore, but it's still hers."
"We don't want to run your girl out of her own room, Frank."
Colby shook his head. "As soon as she finds out you're staying, she'll insist. She's mostly of two minds about spending nights here anyway."
Unseen behind him, Christine looked down at him and softly shook her head.
After the Operations personnel left, Ivana, Ruche, Ivery, and Matthew remained at the table. "Well," Ivana said, "that went better than I expected."
"Ben is a thoughtful and reasonable man," Ivery said. "And he's loyal to his people. I imagine he's been pondering what to do about his Twelves for a while now. He knows this is a good endgame for them, though I doubt he'll ever tell you so. He may even be secretly grateful that you made the decision for him."
Matt spoke for the first time, addressing Ruche. "You're sure that your recruiters didn't compromise the operatives? Santini will go ballistic if the operation fails because one of your people exposed one of his."
"Not at all," Ruche said, looking a little nervous, as he always did when he had Matthew Callahan's attention. "Vientiane may have triggered it, but we've been making plans to pull the Specials out of active operations for a while now. The men I sent all have undercover experience. They know what they're doing. And I made sure that each X-teamer was approached by someone he knows personally. We still have quite a few people working on the East Coast, technically headquartered at Central, but using McLean for a base of operations."
Ivana quirked a smile. "It's nice to know that not all our personnel east of the Mississippi have forgotten who they work for." She turned to Ivery. "Are you all set?"
The doctor nodded. "We've set up the necessary equipment, some of it moved from the Michigan complex. Schedules and protocols are laid out, staff trained. The monitoring devices the subjects will wear are comfortable and unobtrusive, just bracelets made to look like expensive watches. I don't expect anyone will object to wearing them. We won't tell them about the scrambler function, of course." He hesitated. "And the holding area is ready, if needed. I seriously hope we don't have to use it. The Twelves have only been slipping away at a rate of about one a year."
"But that's no guarantee of future incidents," Ivana said. "Nobody expected the Thirteens to all manifest within a week of one another."
"True. I'd just rather see these men die of old age, with their family surrounding their bed in their last moments. Not locked in a padded room or shot by their friends."
"So do we all. Let's try to make it happen. Gentlemen, I'd say we're done here."
Ivery and Ruche picked up their belongings and left, but Matthew remained in his chair. Alone with Matt, Ivana allowed herself to slump in her seat, releasing a heavy breath. He left his chair to stand behind her and massage her shoulders. "It was the right call."
"I know." She sighed again as she felt herself softening under his touch. "Stop."
"Afraid someone will walk in?" His hands moved to the back of her neck, working the muscles and pulling a soft grunt from her. "You think Nicole doesn't know?"
"It doesn't matter what Nicole knows. I'm concerned with what everyone else may know. Seriously, Matt, stop." When his hands lifted away, brushing her ears with his fingertips as they withdrew, she said. "I feel like my grip on all this is starting to slip."
"Then tighten your grip," Matt said. "You don't need two Operations Directors. Why do you put up with that obstructionist? Colby doesn't have any more personal loyalty to you than Santini does, but at least you can count on him to take orders."
"I think about that every day, believe me. But he and Jack built the Razors and the X-Teams, dropped with them, bled with them. Losing Jack dealt them a blow they're just now fully coming back from. I can't gamble with their loyalty by dismissing him, not yet."
"Maybe it would be better if he just had an accident."
She scoffed. "If he was hit by an asteroid, I'd still be a suspect. No. I just hope to God his fucking plane doesn't crash on its way back to Virginia."
Matt lifted his jacket from the back of his chair. "My flight doesn't leave until tomorrow morning," he said. "I presume you're going home tonight."
Ivana, like most other senior executives at Central, owned a house in a private subdivision a few miles east of the complex, a large gated cul-de-sac full of multi-million-dollar mansions on landscaped ten-acre lots. Hers, the largest and most expensive, sat at the very end of the street on a slight rise, beautiful and aloof. It had ten bedrooms that no guest had ever slept in, a perfectly-maintained pool she hardly used, and a beautiful view that she seldom saw in the daylight. It had a staff of six: two housekeepers, a cook, and three gardeners. The groundskeepers were busy enough, but the people she hired to cook her meals and clean up after her were idle as pensioners. Her only reason for having the place built was to upstage her subordinates to whom such tokens of success mattered. She usually spent one or two nights a week there, preferring to sleep in the executive suite at Central. That was, when she was planning to sleep alone.
"Late," she said. "Managing this situation is going to take some work, and needs done now. And most of the people I have to talk to are twelve time zones away."
"Call the house first. Send the staff home," he said. "I'll make you dinner."
"At two in the morning?"
"You're worth waiting up for." He straightened his tie. "Besides, you know how little I sleep."
An hour later, in a lull while she waited for some contacts to return her calls, Ivana Baiul sat silent in her dark-themed conference room, sipping the last cup of coffee in her carafe and brooding.
She needed someone.
Paranoia, Ivana thought, was a very useful trait in her occupation. Its drawback, of course, was that it didn't know when to quit. She needed someone she could trust to tell her things she didn't want to hear. And the list of candidates for that position was damned fucking short.
Ben Santini never hesitated to tell her she was stepping over the line. But he did that every time she made a decision that affected him. She sighed. Benito wasn't disloyal, technically. But his loyalty was to a very different IO than the one she ran. The Associate Director of Operations would do away with nearly every department in International Operations that he didn't already control; his contempt for the 'spooks' and 'mad scientists' at IO was legendary.
She huffed into her coffee. Ben was career military; he should be less naive about how America treated its warriors. Politicians were quick to share the credit for a successful operation, but that didn't mean they would willingly give you what you needed to get the job done. He could never have maintained his operation in McLean on the pittance the government doled out to him; it was Research Directorate's nearly limitless income that allowed him to recruit the sort of men he needed, and to train and equip them properly. And it was Planning that provided the intelligence that allowed him his pick of worthwhile missions, and its influence a free hand in planning and executing them. Why couldn't the man see he needed her?
Gerry Ruche was a toady - a talented toady, but a man who would never question or contradict her. He had ridden her skirt hem to his present position, and would never risk losing his grip on either one. Anything he did that showed a spark of initiative was intended solely to ingratiate her to him. Arguing with her for any reason was as unlikely as resigning his position. She smiled. And besides, the man was terrified of her.
She set her cup down and circled the rim with a fingertip. If there was a person on earth she could call a friend, it was Ben Ivery. At the time of her first promotion, he had been a mere staffer in the Research Directorate, though one with a clearance and skill level sufficient to get him assigned to Genesis. He had quite probably saved her life the day Nicole manifested.
She had shown her gratitude first by attempting to seduce him; he had gently but firmly rebuffed her advances. Strangely, his refusal to take her offer had engendered in her an unaccustomed respect, and they had become friendly. She had promoted him as soon as her rising power gave her the opportunity, and he had shown himself a capable and supportive subordinate. Ivery was the sort of man who might question her decisions, but only in private, and in a manner that she had to listen hard for. Unfortunately, Ivana was not in the habit of soliciting advice, and she knew that she was hard to talk to when she had the bit between her teeth about something. Ben Ivery had made a decision involving her without her consent only one time since they had known each other, and that when he knew she was in no state to make a rational decision.
Colby doesn't have any more personal loyalty to you than Santini does, but at least you can count on him to take orders. True enough. But Colby would make a poor confidant, she thought. Not after the raid on his little meeting in the restaurant in Boulder, and what happened after. He might be forgiving of girlfriends who stole from him and lied to him, but Ivana's betrayal had left him in a wheelchair and missing a kidney, a constant reminder of the consequences of taking her trust for granted.
Matt was free enough with advice. And he was easy to talk to. But then, all of them were easy to talk to, weren't they? At least, the ones that were still coherent. And Matthew Callahan, no less than his sister, wore civility like a comfortable disguise. He was more than entertaining in bed, but that didn't require trust, or even respect. More than once, she had wondered how much of her willingness to bed him was a function of I/S, and whether his interest in a woman old enough, barely, to be his mother was a stratagem to keep his boss pliant and permissive. Matt stirred her, and he was a capable subordinate, but she couldn't think of him as a partner in any deep sense of the word.
Jack would have been a perfect partner. He would have stood up to her on issues where it mattered, and given her her way when it didn't, even if he disagreed. He saw things differently, but with depth at least equal to her own. He had a conscience, but one that his pragmatism could nevertheless override. He was a loner with a small circle of deeply trusted friends and a thousand acquaintances, a man who knew how to take advice and give it, follow orders and issue them. The people here, especially the older hands, had respected him in a way that they never would her, regarding him as a member of the IO triumvirate, along with Miles and Santini. If she had only handled him a little differently…
Miles had intended that she and Jack rule International Operations together after his death, Ivana was certain. He'd groomed them and structured their positions so that they could work as complements, and after the disappearance of Jack's wife, he'd vacated Ivana's bed and begun pushing them together like a spinster aunt playing matchmaker. No doubt he'd hoped that sharing sex might keep them from trying to kill each other once they were sharing power as well. How long had he known he was dying? She wondered.
Keeping Jack's son from him was a major blunder, she decided. She should have offered the boy up as soon as the DNA test on 'Robert Lane' had confirmed his identity, instead of sending him to Darwin with the others. But she had wanted to make sure that Jack's son was firmly in her camp before revealing him to her rival and prospective partner, thinking the boy might provide her some leverage with his father. She had never guessed that Jack would learn the truth on his own, or that his reaction would be so extreme. You think you know somebody…
She brought the cup to her lips, but it was empty. She thought about calling someone in to make another pot, and decided against. She was going to need some rest to get through tomorrow, but between the work still remaining tonight and Matt waiting for her at home, she doubted she would get much; what little sleep she might have time for shouldn't be jeopardized by being up to her eyebrows in caffeine.
Her phone rang: one of IO's pet officials in Laos, returning from the mess at Vientiane and ready to report. She connected the call, listened for a brief while, and began issuing instructions.
20:15 Central Time
Tupelo Mississippi
The corridor of the apartment building looked little different from that of a modestly-priced hotel, Nicole thought. Just a plain hallway, painted and carpeted in neutral colors, lined with identical numbered doors – they even had peepholes, she saw with a little smile. The spacing between the doors was scarcely wider than that of a hotel hallway either, making her wonder if Sharita was occupying any more living space than she had at Darwin. She found the properly numbered door, knocked – there was no doorbell – and waited with a thumb over the peephole.
After a few moments, a girl's voice came through the panel. "Hello? Is someone there?"
She said, voice light, "It's me, Sharita," as if the girl had been expecting her. "Are you going to let me in?" No doubt a stranger on the other side of her door speaking as if she knew her - even using her real name - must be unsettling. Nicole gave her a little nudge through the door, just enough to make her uncomfortable with keeping her visitor in the hallway.
The door opened a foot to reveal a tall, Eurasian-featured girl, her skin the light brown color of baker's chocolate, her hair a heavy mass of ringlets bouncing on her shoulders as she leaned into the opening. In a second, her look changed from curiosity to blank surprise to terror. Her head swung side to side, taking in as much of the hallway as she could see without stepping through the door.
Nicole considered amping up her call to blanket the girl's fear, and decided against. Let her overcome her own fear; that way it won't wear off when I'm gone. "Relax, it's just me. I'm not here to take you back. We need to talk." She softened her voice. "We used to talk, Sharita. Can I come in?"
The door swung wider as the girl inside stepped back. As Nicole had expected, it was snug, with an open floorplan leaving the kitchen and living room in view of the entrance. A very short hallway off the kitchen revealed two doors, presumably for the bathroom and the apartment's single bedroom. She could hear the microwave above the stove running. "What's cooking?"
"Just some leftovers. I just got home."
Sounds lonely. She spied a necktie draped over the back of the couch. Maybe not. She stepped inside. "You wouldn't have a Diet Pepsi in the fridge, would you?"
"No, sorry, no diet anything." In a more normal voice she went on, "We've got milk and juice and water. Or I could make tea, or coffee."
"What kind of juice?"
"Orange, or cran-raz. Ocean Spray."
She thought about asking for coffee, despite the hour, but she doubted there would be any cream in the refrigerator, or real sugar in the cupboard. She smiled. "You never used to be a health nut. Cran-raz sounds good." She eyed the refrigerator, which had a dispenser built into one of its doors. "Over ice, if you've got." She moved into the living room and picked up the tie. "Anyone I know?"
Glass clinked in the kitchen as ice cubes dropped in. "Nn. Edward."
"Edward?" Nicole grinned. She looked very deliberately at the single bedroom door, bringing a touch of color to the other girl's cheeks. "So, he's not gay?" The boy, she recalled clearly, had a number of girlish mannerisms, and had never dated at Darwin; the assumption had been easy for the other students to make. She had known different: her power didn't allow any ambiguity about a man's interest and preferences. But, lacking any plausible explanation but the obvious one for her knowledge, she had played along and let the boy's reputation stand.
"Not really, no." She brought the glasses to the table. "He just didn't know how to act like a guy. Three older sisters, no brothers, overprotective mom, dad gone. Can we drink here? We spill any on the couch, I'll never get the stain out."
They sat. Nicole asked, "Where's he at now?"
"At work," Sharita said. "He'll be home in a couple hours."
"What kind of job has him coming home at ten o'clock at night?"
"Used cars," she said. "The lot stays open late so people can shop after work. He's crazy good at it. Two other salesmen, but he gets half the lot's commissions. He brings home most of our money."
"Edward wasn't even in your pod. How did you guys end up leaving Darwin together?"
"I don't know," Sharita said. "We were all just sort of wandering outside in the parking lot, mixing and looking for a ride. I was kind of looking for Leon, but I never found him. And all of a sudden, I realized Ed and I were holding the front door handles on the same car." She shrugged. "Weird. But not weird at the same time, you know? And things just went on from there."
She nodded. "Seems to be a trend. Leon's been living in Detroit the past two years." She smiled into her glass. "With Rachel Goldman."
"You're shitting me." The girl grinned. "And they're…"
She shrugged. "You know Leon. If they are, he'll die before he admits it."
"So, you know where everybody's at?"
"No." She took a sip of the tart earthy-tasting beverage, so different from what she was used to. Why had she asked for it? "Just the ones whose luck ran out."
Sharita sat with both hands around her glass, probably to keep them still. "Nicole, what are you doing here?"
Careful, she told herself. Don't try too hard to sound sincere. "Short story? I'm here to help you."
"How?"
"Now for the longer story. You know there's a manhunt on for you, right? For all of you." At the girl's nod she went on, "Probably the only reason you haven't all been caught yet is that the hunt is all on the down-low. The people who set up Darwin don't like coming out of the shadows. So they work through proxies. There are people who make a living finding things that are hidden and secret – tech research, corporate information, personal stuff that might be good for blackmail… and people gone missing. My employers have a contract with a number of such people, with instructions to find you.
"A few days ago, one of these information brokers claimed to have the whereabouts of five of our runaways, scattered from Key West to St. Louis. Since we're fairly certain none of you left the compound alone, that would mean a chance to bag at least ten of you. Past two years, we've only located half a dozen runaways; somebody dropping twice that many right into our laps seemed too good to be true. But this guy has a reputation for results, and he's made a lot of money getting people what they want. So my bosses sent me to talk to the guy, and see if he really had the goods or was running a scam on us, or maybe just barking up the wrong tree. He offered me a test sample, let me pick any name and address out of the five to check out. One of them was in the same town. It was Natalie Fosse."
"What did you do?"
"I persuaded the broker to drop the deal," she said, remembering the sound of him hitting the ground after leaping from the roof of his house, "then I met with his investigator and convinced him not to talk about it." The investigator would probably be found in a few days, after someone complained about the smell coming from his apartment. "I told my bosses it looked like a case of mistaken identity, but I was going to check them all to be sure. I'm going to report negative results on all of them."
"Why?"
"It's not because I'm soft-hearted or anything. I have my reasons." She pushed the nearly-full glass away. "Here's the thing. This guy was just the first. If he found you, others will. I don't know how he did it, but we need to figure out what kind of tracks you've all left and sweep them out." She leaned back in the chair. "Given the size of the reward, I doubt he was sitting on this information long. Has something happened recently, something changed? New apartment, new job, new pastime?"
Sharita studied the surface of the table. "This is the apartment we moved into when we came here," she said. "Same jobs too, the guy who forged our paper set us up with them. But… I got kind of a promotion, just a month ago."
Nicole sat silent, waiting. The other girl went on, "I work for a local TV station. Just gopher stuff, scheduling and such. Sometimes I'd lay out the scripts for the 'casters. Last October, the weather guy took a week off for a trip to Maine. Somebody suggested I fill in. You know, just five minutes in front of the green screen waving my arm. Apparently somebody thought I was photogenic. The station got some positive feedback from it, and 'caster's been making noise about his accrued time off, so the station made me a regular alternate presenter, two nights a week." She shook her head. "Stupid, right?"
Nicole was inclined to agree. The subject of a nationwide manhunt should not put herself twice a week in front of a camera connected to the screens of thirty thousand strangers. But… "You have a new name now. You changed your 'do and your makeup. You don't look much like your school picture any more, Sharita. You look more than two years older. If you were actually a criminal on the run, it probably wouldn't be enough to keep you incognito. But there aren't any APBs out for you, any of you. The number of people actually looking for you is very small. One would think you'd have to stick up a little higher than that to show up on the radar." She pressed, "There's something else, Sharita."
"The old guy," Sharita said. "Down in the cells. He said we were all going to get powers."
"It's the real reason you were invited to Darwin, babe. What can you do? What's your twist?"
"Well… Doing the weather piece was okay, talking about pressure fronts and precipitation records and such. But when it came time to do the forecast… sometimes I knew it wasn't right, that the rain or sleet would arrive sooner, or later, or not at all, that the wind would be blowing from a different direction. Usually I just stuck with the script – best not to make waves, right? But a week ago this freak storm rolled through, I mean snow, a foot of it."
"Your weatherman didn't see it coming?"
"Nobody's weatherman saw it coming, not one station, not NWS. I know I should have just read the 'prompter and let it go, but people depend on those forecasts, nobody down here knows how to drive in snow – seriously, they close the schools if there's an inch of it in the forecast, and once it falls you see cars in ditches every half a mile." Her chin dipped. "I got in trouble for it. Nobody cared that my predictions were better than the meteorologists', or that I might have saved somebody's life. He was the expert, and I was some kid they hired to carry a clipboard and lay out snacks in the breakroom. There was supposed to be a meeting about it yesterday, to decide whether to bust me back down to breakroom maintenance, or maybe just fire me, I don't know. But it got canceled, and I hear it wasn't rescheduled. I don't know what to make of that."
"I do," Nicole said. "Your bosses might not have cared that you predicted a storm from nowhere with nothing but intuition, but somebody took notice. Sharita, can you change the weather?"
"What?"
"Like, make it rain or not rain? Change the way the wind blows, anything like that?"
The girl scowled. "How the hell would you do that?"
"Just asking," Nicole said. "You never know."
"I know I shouldn't have done it," Sharita said. "I should have read the forecast off the 'prompter instead of sticking my nose in. I should never have got in front of the camera. I just…"
"I know," Nicole said. "It's been two years. Two years of routine and caution. Two years of wondering just how careful you really need to be." She reached across the table and took the girl's face in her hands. "Now you know. You can't be too careful. And you won't have a clue that they're on to you before they're coming through the door." She let go. "How much money do you have? In the bank, or under the mattress? Whatever you can lay hands on in a day or two?"
"I'm not sure," she said. "A few thousand. Why?"
"A 'few thousand' doesn't sound like enough." From her purse she produced five wrapped packages of twenties. "Here's ten more."
"Nicole, what-"
"You need to relocate. ASAP. The only way you'll know exactly how long you can wait is by waiting too long. Buy a fresh set of IDs, today. Quit your jobs, rent a truck – in one of your new names - clean out your apartment. Make it quick but orderly, like you've been planning it awhile. Tell everybody you're moving to Ohio or something. Dump everything in a storage space right here in town – don't donate it. Put down six or twelve months' storage rental in advance, so that door doesn't get rolled up before your trail goes cold. Return the truck; rented trucks have trackers. Roll out of town with no more than you can pack in your car, and don't ever come back. Go anywhere except where you told people you were headed. Get rid of the car before you get there, even if you have to set fire to it. Settle in and start over. And don't make the mistake of thinking they're ever going to stop looking."
She looked down at the money. "I don't know what to say."
"Say you'll do it. Say Edward won't give you any trouble over it. Say you'll call your arranger, and start packing and calling the utility companies tomorrow."
"Yeah," Sharita said, nodding. "I will. What are you going to do now?"
"Get in touch with the others and warn them. You and Natalie are done, so, five down, presumably six to go."
"Five?"
Nicole let a little smile play at the corner of her mouth. "Oh, didn't I say? She ran with Adam and Tai."
"Tai? Tai Shinoda?"
"Do we know another Tai?"
Sharita scoffed. "Natalie."
"Yep, Natalie."
"Do they share a bed, or do the boys take turns?"
"Don't know. I wasn't even in their apartment. I called her at work and we met at lunch." She added, "She went blonde. It looks good."
"Is there some way we can contact you?" Sharita asked. "For emergencies. I know we can't contact our families, but surely nobody's going to stake you out?"
She pretended to consider, then took a small notebook from her purse, wrote down a number, and slid it across the table. "Burn phone. I never use it. Memorize the number, right now. I'll destroy it when I'm sure you've got it. Don't put it in your phone, don't write it down. Don't call unless lives are in danger, seriously."
She looked at the page. "I suppose you've already got my number?"
"Yes. Call me after you change it." After a few minutes and several repetitions, Nicole was satisfied, and gathered up the slip, returning it to her purse.
Sharita said, "Maybe you should do this with everybody."
"Maybe I should." She had already provided the number to Natalie, and intended to do so with the others, but Sharita didn't need to know that. She tapped a fingernail on the tabletop, until she realized she was imitating a restless mannerism of Ivana's. Her hand stilled. "Sharita. Your power. Be careful with it."
"I'm not going anywhere near a TV station again."
"It's not just that. These powers of ours… they're stronger or weaker for different people, and develop faster or slower, but they never completely stop expanding. After a while, using them is easier than not using them. And for some of us, they're not easy to control. Yours may become a bigger burden than you can even imagine right now. Not just for the risk it puts you in. After a while, it's less a matter of calling it up than it is keeping it throttled down. You just don't know where it's going to stop."
"Nicole, I can predict the weather. An old guy with an arthritic knee can do the same thing."
"Freak storm," she said. "Do you recall hearing about a freak storm in California last April? A real record-breaker that nobody saw coming?"
"Sure, everybody at the station was…. You've got to be kidding me."
"No," she said. "One of us did that. Somebody quite a bit farther down the path you're on. We're dangerous, Sharita, some of us at least. It's one reason they collected us in an underground bunker, miles from civilization." She stood. "Just don't let it get away from you, is all. I need to go." I need to be gone before Edward gets home. He needs to hear all this from her, not me. He'll ask fewer questions that way. And if I'm still here when the explanations are done, he'll want me to spend the night instead of sharing the road with the dark and the drunks. It's just how he is. And if I spend the night, it might not be me sleeping on the couch – assuming anybody does.
"Nicole. What's your superpower?"
She smiled. The expression didn't feel quite right on her face. "Likeability."
"Like Edward. Everybody who shakes hands with him on the lot buys from him."
Do the wives come back later without their husbands to talk to him, I wonder?
"Nicole. Are you doing this for Bobby?"
She stopped. "What?"
"Everybody knew you liked him. Most of us thought, sooner or later, he'd get over Sarah, and you two would hook up."
She shook her head. "He's safe, beyond any power of mine to help. And he's with Sarah now."
"Wow. Are we all that mismatched?" She hesitated. "How about you, do you have anybody, Nicole?"
She smiled. "I've got a boyfriend. I guess you could say we're a mismatch."
"Anybody I know?"
"No, he was never at Darwin." She reached into her purse for her car key. "He's a normal. Really, I'm glad."
"Well, good on you." The girl stood, approached, and, quite unexpectedly, wrapped her arms around her guest. She said into her ear, "You're okay, Nicole."
Nicole felt an alien emotion, weak and momentary but distinct. She patted the girl's shoulder blade. "Thanks. Gotta go. Be careful. Tell Edward I said hi."
In the car, as she drove toward her hotel, she thought about those last moments, and her unaccustomed reaction. The faint and fleeting emotion she had felt in Sharita's arms had been a tiny twinge of guilt. What on earth is getting into me lately? She scoffed and dismissed the memory, turning her thoughts to a plane ticket and her next runaway. The sooner she was finished with her business, the sooner she could return to Frank. She smiled at the windshield in anticipation.
Wednesday December 6 2006
Boulder
01:15 MT
Colby sipped tea, looking out his front window at the cliff-like downslope of the Front Range and the twinkling of city lights on the plain a thousand feet below. He sipped again, savoring the peace and quiet, gathering his thoughts.
His guests were asleep, he presumed. Benito had retired to the spare bedroom, after takeout dinner and a lengthy talk about a dozen subjects, some of which necessitated the use of Colby's bug scrambler.
One such had been Nicole Callahan. "If she's as tight with that bitch as her brother, you shouldn't even be trading smiles with her in the hallway."
"I'm avoiding her as much as I can, believe me. And she doesn't seem eager to press things. Maybe if we avoid each other long enough, she'll lose interest."
"I've known that girl since she was born," Santini said. "She was stubborn even when she was a toddler. She's never been easily diverted."
Christie had been picked up shortly after dinner by one of Gordon's A team and returned just before midnight, like a prom date. Seeing that her boss was already in bed, she had showered and moved into Cheryl's room for the night.
Cher was sleeping at Central. As Colby had expected, she had insisted Christie take her room, and told Colby that she would be returning from the compound in the morning. Colby had been certain that the girl was glad of an excuse not to be around the house when Colby wanted so plainly to have some private time with a man famous for his opposition to Ivana Baiul.
His phone vibrated. He looked at the display and his breath caught at the now-familiar number. He turned on his scrambler, connected and held the phone to his ear without speaking. Maybe she'll think it's a malfunction and hang up.
"Hi."
"Hi," he returned, feeling oddly tongue-tied. "How are you?"
"Okay. Waiting at the airport for my flight."
"At one in the morning?"
"Two, here. It was the quickest flight to where I'm headed next. I could have waited till a decent hour, I suppose. I'm getting tired of hotels, I guess."
"Sounds lonely." Why did I say that? Why the hell did I say that?
"It is. I miss you." He gripped the phone, dry-mouthed, for a moment before she said, "It's okay, you don't have to say it."
"Instead, he said, "How's work?"
"About like I thought," she said. "I won't be back before the weekend, probably. And by then I won't be able to see you."
"Why?" It was out of his mouth without thought.
"It'll be that time of the month."
At a loss, he said, "I see."
"I don't think you do. I don't suppose you've noticed, but I'm out of the office the same week almost every month."
His disquiet deepened. "My sympathies. I've known women who have rough periods."
"I have cramps for a day sometimes. That's not the problem. Do you have any idea what happens to my mating call when my baby-making machinery is primed and ready? Five days a month, I simply can't be around men. I won't even be able to fly, for fear the pilot will crash the plane."
Something made him say it. "What do you do then? Do you stay somewhere?" He had no idea if she had lodgings nearby besides her suite at Central. "Do you have a place in the subdivision, or…"
"Surrounded by all those stiffs? I've got a place on the ridge road, like you, but south of the state highway instead of north. Not another house for miles. Nothing pretentious, just a little bungalow, about a thousand square feet, but I like it. I had it built a couple of years ago, after I stayed a night in one just like it. The utter normalcy of it appealed to me somehow."
"So we're neighbors," he said absently. "I never knew."
"Well, why would you? Like you said, Frank, we don't even meet in the hallways." After a moment she said, "Maybe you could come by for a tour sometime."
He coughed to clear his throat. "You said something about discretion, last time we talked."
"I also said something about needing to be face to face. It'll keep, Frank. Listen, gotta go, my plane is boarding. I'll call later if I can, kay? Say hi to Cheryl for me."
After the line disconnected, he saw Christie looking at him from the hallway. She padded into the living room, dressed in a pair of thin cotton pants and a tank top. She sat on the couch next to his wheelchair and put her feet on the ottoman. "Nicole?"
"How did you know?"
"I've seen you on the phone with a girlfriend before."
"She's not my girlfriend."
"Then what is she?"
He shrugged.
"All our lives depend on you being able to keep secrets from her, Frank."
"I know," he said. "I just don't know what I can do about it." He added, "I gather you've never met her."
"Not even sure what she looks like. Though I imagine she's gorgeous. She's traveling, right? Does she call you every night?"
"It's not a routine. Sometimes twice a day, sometimes not at all. Never anything important, just checking in." He added, "I don't know what she wants from me, really. It can't be sex. She can get that from anyone she wants. But she hasn't been questioning me either, or making any attempt to gain my trust." He started at the rude noise coming from Christie's mouth. "What?"
"You never think they want anything from you. You pick them up out of the gutter and take them home, give them a bath and a hot meal, and when they start following you around you think it's because they're grateful."
Softly he said, "I'm sorry, Christie. About Jack. I didn't know either, I swear."
"Never thought you did. He loved you too. He cut you loose for the same reason he did me, to protect you and safeguard your career. Look at you now, Mister Big Shot Director of Operations."
He smiled. "Look at you, Miss Number-One Ranked Female Expeditionary."
"Very funny." She stretched out a leg, toes pointed. She had pretty feet for someone who wore boots all the time, he thought. "Find out what she really wants, Frank. It's your only chance. And ours."