Critical Space

by Greg Rucka

  "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 worri
ed 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.

  Chapter 8

  We met at six on the nose the next morning, all of us in our work clothes and Kevlar vests, and before we did anything else, I shared Moore's news about Oxford. At first, they all thought it was a bad joke.

  "My sense of humor, while damaged, is not quite that morbid," I told them. "Moore has reliable intelligence that another of The Ten is on the prowl in our neck of the woods."

  "Jesus Christ," Natalie said. "Two of them?"

  I nodded. "This one's called Oxford. There is a positive, however."

  "Her Ladyship has canceled her trip?" Corry asked hopefully. "She has taken vows and entered a convent in Upper Volta?"

  "Not that positive," I said. "Moore's intelligence mentions nothing of Drama, and in fact, indicates that she has been inactive for much of the last year."

  They considered that. Then Dale said, "So Moore's intelligence on Drama is basically that he has no intelligence on Drama."

  "It's better than him confirming what Gracey and Bowles told me yesterday," I pointed out.

  "Becomes a question of who we believe."

  "Yes."

  "Which leads us again to the question of why did the CIA bother to tell you she was on the move in the first place," Natalie said.

  "Yes."

  They all looked at me as if I had something more to add. I did, but it wasn't very insightful.

  I said, "Let's get to work."

  * * *

  While Natalie and I handled the final weapons and radio checks, Dale and Corry went to the garage up the block from the office to retrieve the vehicles. It took them a little over thirty minutes to make certain that the cars were secure, and by a quarter of seven we were on our way to Jersey. Natalie and Dale took the Benz, leaving Corry and me with the Lexus. Both cars had been purchased for the firm, and both vehicles were hardened top to bottom, though the Benz was the more heavily armored of the two, sporting gun ports, Run-Flat tires, and a fire-suppression system in addition to the standard reinforced frame and bulletproof glass.

  Corry drove, following Dale's lead in the Benz. The traffic out of the city was as heavy as the traffic on its way in, but worse. A lot of the delivery trucks making runs from the outer boroughs liked to cut across the island and use the Holland Tunnel, trying to cut down on tolls. When you're boxed in by three four-ton trucks, it doesn't matter if the car you're in is reinforced or not.

  I kept my eyes moving the whole time, looking for tails front or back, until we were past Newark and turned onto 280. We had an almost two-hour drive ahead of us, though Dale was moving quickly, punching through traffic as efficiently as possible to keep us on schedule. If we arrived at the airport early, that would be fine; it was arriving late that we couldn't allow, and though I knew that Moore wouldn't let Lady Ainsley-Hunter off the plane unless we were present and in position, I didn't want to keep them waiting.

  Natalie's voice came clear over the radio in the car. "Dale says we're good, looks like we're free and clear."

  "Wonderful," I said.

  "Hey, Corry? " Dale asked. "Is Atticus white-knuckling it?"

  "I'd check, but then I'd have to look away from the road, and then he'd freak out," Corry answered.

  "Drive, damn you," I said.

  Over the radio speaker, I heard Natalie and Dale chuckling.r />
  "ETA roughly one hundred minutes, " Dale reported. "Out. "

  Corry grinned, adjusting his grip on the wheel. Past West Orange the views changed, the industrial heart of Jersey fading to a more pastoral countryside. Our route had been chosen to take us past a number of airports, both large and small fields, just to keep any potential tails guessing. Past Parsippany, we turned north onto 287, the Boonton Reservoir to our east. The traffic here was lighter, and we accelerated to almost eighty for a short burst. No tails revealed themselves.

  "How'd you sleep?" Corry asked after a while.

  "Well, just not for long. Ended up staying on the phone with Bridgett for almost two hours after I got home. You?"

  "Not badly, all things considered. It took me an hour just to make certain the house was secure, you know?"

  I laughed, and Corry nodded.

  "You, too?"

  "Me, too," I said. "What'd Esme say?"

  "Well, I woke the baby up when I was checking the nursery, and Esme didn't much care for that. Asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. I told her I was just making certain the place was safe."

  "You didn't tell her about Drama?"

  He grimaced, shook his head. "It would've just kept her up all night. She needs her sleep. Did you tell Bridgett?"

  "Yeah, but it's a different situation. She's working for us on this, so I figure she needs to know all the facts."

  After a moment, Corry said, "I don't like keeping things from my wife."

  I thought about how to answer, and then my cell phone rang. It was Bridgett.

  "Hey, you," she said. "You'll never guess where I am."

  "Philadelphia Community College."