"Critical Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucka Greg)

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 of 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."

"Are you saying there are two of them on the prowl?"

"There are at least ten of them, you forget. And they're usually hunting."

I felt very tired, suddenly. "Jesus, Robert."

"Was going to wait until we were with your lot and on the ground before sharing the news, but you sounded insistent in your messages."

"Insistent was then. Verging on panic-stricken is now. What's the deal with Oxford?"

Moore made a hissing noise into the phone, then said, "It'll have to wait 'til I'm there."

"She's back in earshot?"

"You could say that, and you'd be correct."

"You trust your source on this?"

"Hold on," he said, and for almost a minute I heard nothing but the slight hiss from the line. It occurred to me that he was calling from the plane, that he and our principal were already over the Atlantic. When he came back on the line, he resumed as if there hadn't been a break. "I've known my people for years. No mention of your lady friend. Far as that goes, word is she went on hiatus after your last dance. You trust your information?"

I gave it about two seconds of consideration. "I saw pictures," I said.

"Easy enough to fake those," Moore said, and he was getting testy. "Awfully convenient that the Company shares this tidbit with you a mere twenty hours before we're to arrive, don't you think?"

"I do think. But given the nature of the intelligence, I felt it was kind of important that I pass it on. I don't see how it's going to change the operation as it's been defined so far. Unless you decide it's cause to abort."

"I do not. Way I'm reading it, situation is the same, Keith is still Threat One."

"I agree."

"I'll call my people again, see if anything's developed."

"But you doubt it."

"I do, I truly do. Action as before, Atticus."

"Are you going to tell her?"

"Are you daft?"

"Everyone keeps asking me that. See you soon."

"G'night," Moore said.

I set down the phone, then rose and replaced the screwdriver in its case and put the case back in the drawer by the sink. I filled a glass with water from the tap and drank it, wondering if we weren't teetering on the brink of a disaster. Of the intelligence available to me, I was more inclined to trust Moore's than that of two men I'd never met until today. And Moore was Ainsley-Hunter's PSA; even more than myself or my colleagues, he was responsible for her welfare. If he felt that we were safe in proceeding, then he was making that determination with her best interest at heart. Whoever Oxford was, whatever threat he posed, it hadn't been enough to keep Moore from putting Her Ladyship on a plane to cross the ocean.

Except that Moore was also ex-Special Air Service, and the SAS didn't strictly train bodyguards, even though they had an Executive Protection program. They trained men to be soldiers, "complete soldiers," as Moore himself called it. Soldiering and protecting are two different beasts, and while elements of the work exchange, the jobs are nowhere near identical. And Moore wasn't one to back down, I knew that from past experience. It wasn't that he didn't take threats seriously; it was that he had absolute certainty in his ability to ultimately control and conquer any situation he might face.

I finished my water and started for the bedroom, and again saw the light blinking at me from the answering machine, so I stopped and finally played back the message. It was from Bridgett. She left a number and told me to call when I got in, "no matter how late."

The clock on the coffeemaker said it was eighteen minutes past two, but I took the directive seriously, and dialed the number she'd left. When the call was answered, a receptionist told me that the Embassy Suites Hotel in Philadelphia would be pleased to assist me. I asked for Bridgett Logan's room, and after a slight pause for the switchboard to route the request, the phone began ringing. She got it between the third and fourth rings.

"Hummf?" Bridgett said.

"Hey, it's me."

"Dark," she said, and then mumbled something that I took to mean she wanted me to wait. I heard the phone get bumped down and the sound of her moving, then silence. Then there was what might have been water running. Then the phone got picked up again.

"It's two-thirty, you know that?" Bridgett asked.

"It's two-twenty, and you said to call no matter how late."

"I did say that. Yes, I did indeed say that. I'm trying to remember why I said that."

"Because you missed me."

"No, that wasn't it. Hold on." I heard her yawn. "Okay, I remember now. Joseph Keith has a brother named Louis. I talked to him this evening. He's worried about his brother."

"Worried how?"

"Louis Keith says that Joseph has had, and I'm quoting, a thing for Lady Antonia Ainsley-Hunter since he was in college."

"Where'd he go to school?"

"Philadelphia Community College. He was a member of the Together Now chapter there. Brother Louis tells me that Joseph ran for chapter president not once, not twice, but four times. Lost each time."

"Does that qualify him as a disgruntled worker?"

"Not as such, no, but the last time he was defeated, his membership was revoked. Shortly afterwards, he was expelled."

"More details, please."

Bridgett yawned again. "Don't have them yet. It was Sunday, the school offices were closed. I'll go by first thing tomorrow morning, see what I can see. There is something else, though. Not certain what to make of it, but it could shed some light."

"Go ahead."

"Louis Keith told me that his brother believes in past lives. And that, about a year ago – this was Thanksgiving – Joseph told Louis that he and Ainsley-Hunter were married."

"Married," I said.

"Right. This would have been, oh, roughly five or six thousand years ago, in ancient Sumer."

"Sumer," I said.

"Ancient Sumer. Apparently, and Louis was a little embarrassed to relay this last bit…"

"He wasn't embarrassed to relay the first bit?"

She ignored that. "Apparently Joseph was not only her husband, but they were royalty. And Louis reports that his brother said that – I quote once more from my notes – 'the sex was amazing.' "

I stared at the front of my refrigerator. Erika had given me a Magnetic Poetry set a couple of months back, and houseguests were forever messing with it. Bridgett herself could spend upwards of an hour mixing and matching words. The phrase "beautiful but without rice" caught my eye.

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah. The sex must have been really something if Joseph can still conjure it after six thousand years."

"Okay, so he's sprung."

"Potentially sprung. Belief in reincarnation is not a mental defect."

"Fair enough," I said. "Find out why he got expelled."

"First thing in the morning. And how was your day, snookums?"

"I could tell you. But it would take most of an hour, at least. You might want to sleep."

"Nah. I'm lying here with the phone in my ear. If you bore me, I'll just nod off."

"You're in bed?"

"Yup," she said. "Naked, even. Tell me a story."

I told her about my day. She didn't nod off.

When I finished, she said, "I'm coming home."

"Why? You're doing more good following up on Keith than you can do here."

"I'm afraid for you, that's why."

"Don't be. There's nothing that can be done tonight. Moore thinks the Drama stuff is bullshit, anyway."

"Moore doesn't impress me the way he does you," Bridgett said, and I could hear her moving, imagined her rolling up onto an elbow. "Drama's already visited you once when you were alone in that apartment. I don't want that happening again. If I'm there, you've got a little more protection."

"I'll tell you what I told the others, Bridie. Even if she is on the move, she's not coming here."

"And I'll tell you what they should have said in response, Atticus, which is that you cannot possibly know what she will or will not do. From what you've told me about her, she made a point of singling you out. She's targeted you before."

"She singled me out because I was running the operation. If she's truly after Lady Ainsley-Hunter, she won't come here, because that'll tip her hand. Which means that the only other reason to come here would be a personal one, and since she didn't bother to hunt us all down after everything with Pugh had been resolved, I'm inclined to believe she's not interested in taking things personally. Havel's book hasn't changed that."

"Oh, fuck you," she said softly. "I hate it, I absolutely hate it, when you start using logic."

"Well, I do it so rarely," I pointed out.

"You got that right. Just be careful."

"I will be," I said. "You, too. Get some sleep, I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Don't worry about me."

"It works two ways, you get to tell me to be careful, I get to worry about you."

Her silence seemed suddenly sullen. Then she said, "Is that how it works?"

"Did I say something wrong?"

"It's late, Kodiak. I'm tired. Drama's maybe gunning for you. You'll forgive me if my tone isn't everything it should be." She wished me safe rest, and hung up.

I went to bed, thinking that the phone never had been my friend, and never would be.