Going Grey

by Karen Traviss

  "And what happens to your yacht contract? And that physiotherapist of yours?"

  "Needs must, Zombie."

  "You can't keep putting your life on hold."

  "First things first."

  "You'll still be saying that when you're sixty."

  "Things need doing. I'll do them."

  Rob strode ahead, occasionally stopping to take a pair of binoculars from inside his jacket and scope through. He obviously didn't want to discuss it. He checked behind him and pointed through the trees to the road.

  "She could park off the road there. She'd have line of sight to the front door." He handed the binoculars to Mike. "But we could block it with a van or something. Come on, let's check it out in a car and get all this onto a map."

  Rob went bounding off through the trees towards the house as if he was orienteering. Mike jogged after him. "Ian's going to want to be involved."

  "He'll have to sit this out," Rob said. "Let's impress that on him."

  Ian was sitting at the kitchen table with Livvie, arms folded, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. He never wanted to be any trouble. He certainly didn't want to be cosseted like a child. Mike decided to sell it to him by treating him like a military VIP, someone who was capable of taking care of himself but who was too strategically important to risk.

  "Okay, we need to put a few precautions in place," Mike said. "Ian, you're not to go outside without one of us. We'll put GPS trackers on all the cars, and I want you to carry a personal tracker at all times. I also want you to learn to operate the radios in case we can't use the phones for some reason. I don't want you out of voice or visual contact at any time. Understood? Rob and I need to do a recon and then pick up some stuff from Porton, so it's lockdown until we get back."

  Ian shut his eyes for a moment. "I'm sorry about all this."

  "Don't worry, we love it." Rob made a pot of tea, still bundled up in his jacket. "We haven't had any real work to do for ages. Just remember you're what we call the principal, the bloke we're looking after, and we're the close protection team, the bodyguards, so you need to do exactly what we tell you if the shit hits the fan. If you get bored with it, take notes. Because you'll have to do this for some other lucky bugger one day."

  Ian took a notebook out of his back pocket and started writing. He really was taking notes. "I'll be in the gym, then. I assume daily runs outside are off."

  "Temporarily," Mike said. "But this is going to end sooner rather than later. I promise."

  Nazani had finally come to Westerham. Mike had lost his buffer zone between the front line and home, the portal between the real and the unreal in Rob's cosmology. He refused to let it destroy his sense of sanctuary, but that had been tainted forever simply by thinking what might happen. This was how many of the guys he'd known at school now lived. The world outside their gates was a permanent threat.

  Rob drove as far around the estate as public roads could reach, occasionally stopping to walk up tracks to check ease of access. Gradually, Mike built a picture of where Dru would need to position herself or a camera to keep an eye on their movements. If she wanted to watch the entrance, then she didn't have any cover at all; she'd have to park on the road and invite attention. If she drove up the dead-end track on the eastern boundary, then she could conceal a car, but Mike could place a camera and motion sensor to watch the turning.

  Her best bet was to leave the car well out of sight and lay up in the woods. She'd need some advanced skills to do that. And she'd still have to run the gauntlet of the security sensors to get close enough to the house to get eyes on Ian.

  Rob parked the Mercedes on the grass verge with the engine running and made notes on the plan folded on his knees. "If she shows up, she'd better plan how she's going to take a piss. It's the little details that bugger you up on hard routine."

  "Did you know ladies can buy plastic gizmos so they can do a tinkle standing up? It changes the whole battlespace."

  "Zombie, don't go there. Please. I don't want my last fragile illusions about women to be shattered. It's a fading memory as it is."

  "Just trying to lighten the mood. I've turned this into the siege of Leningrad in less than twelve hours."

  "Better that than thinking everything's fine while a Panzer division rolls into your front garden."

  "We're thinking too military. I'm starting to favour your con-man idea. She'll pose as someone to get information so she can PID Ian."

  "There's something hilarious about positively identifying a shape-shifter."

  "Well, there's no pizza boy to tell her about the folks on Forest Road who always tip big. And even if she turns out to be a badass, any hands-on stuff has to be done by someone like us."

  Rob sketched a few more lines on the map. "Might as well plan for everything. I bet she's still carrying that burner phone. You know. The number she gave Joe."

  "Maybe."

  "It'd be fun to ring that at the right moment."

  "Are you enjoying this?"

  "No, but I'm good at it. And that makes me feel better." Rob checked over his shoulder before pulling out onto the road again. "Okay, Porton here we come."

  Mike bought trackers and SIMs for all the cars, plus a wrist GPS and some extra units in case things panned out as they feared and he got the chance to tag a surveillance vehicle. The magnetic variety had a two-month battery life, ample if the worst happened. When they got home, he made it his first priority to find Ian and make sure his personal tracker was set up properly.

  "He's been in the store room all morning updating the inventory," Livvie said. "Don't worry, I checked. He's just staying busy."

  Ian, like Rob, always needed to find chores to do. The store room housed steel racks of food, fuel, bottled water, generators, and other survival essentials in case the house was cut off by bad weather and they needed to ride things out for a couple of weeks. Mike walked through the garage and opened the store doors.

  "Ian?" Mike couldn't see him for a moment, but the tiled floor was immaculately clean and the items on the shelves were sorted and lined up as neatly as a supermarket display. "I got you a GPS tracker watch. That way you won't forget it."

  Mike peered around the first row of shelves. Ian was sitting on a set of steps, looking at the palm of his hand as if he was lost in thought. A gas lighter and a small mirror sat on the shelf next to him.

  "Ian? Are you okay?"

  He looked slightly embarrassed and put his hands together. Mike wondered what he'd interrupted.

  Now there's a fatherhood lesson. Knock and wait. Got it.

  "I don't know if you'll understand," Ian said.

  Mike wheeled a portable generator into the aisle and sat down on it. "Try me. I used to be eighteen, believe it or not."

  Ian looked down awkwardly at his hands. Mike expected him to open up about some crisis of confidence or offer more apologies, but he simply unclasped his hands and turned the left one palm up to show Mike. Perhaps this was some new camouflage trick that hadn't quite gone to plan.

  But the thought lasted less than a heartbeat. Ian's left palm was blistered and burned. Mike's gut flipped over.

  "What the hell happened?" He leaned forward to inspect the burn, but Ian pulled his hand away. "You had an accident? We need to put a dressing on that."

  "Promise you won't be pissed at me."

  "Of course I won't." Am I that censorious? Maybe I worry too loudly. "Why would I be?"

  "I had to do it. In case I fuck things up again." Ian took a breath and picked up the lighter with his right hand. "The last few times that I've morphed accidentally, pain's triggered it. But you learn to handle pain the same way you handle adrenaline. You know. You habituate."

  Ian mimed the action of holding his hand over a flame as if he was trying to help Mike understand. Mike realised he was probably staring at Ian like an idiot. It took him a few seconds to put it all together.

  "You burned yourself? Deliberately? Jesus Christ, why?"

  "How else can I repr
oduce the pain thing? You can't hit yourself that hard. And everything else is really dangerous, like blades." Ian let out a long breath. "Sorry. I knew you'd be mad."

  Mike wasn't mad. He was upset, helpless, and desperate to put things right for Ian. "No, I just – damn, I just don't know what you go through. I don't know enough to help."

  "I'm not made like you, Mike. I need to find my own way of handling all this."

  "Sure. Sorry." Mike tried to look more relaxed about it. Recoiling wouldn't help. "But you can't keep doing that, buddy. Let's treat the burn and have another think. You don't have to tell anyone. I'll just say you touched a hot pipe or something."

  "It's okay. It worked. I don't lose control now." Ian stood up and put the mirror in his pocket. There was a resigned necessity about him, as if he accepted all this went with the territory, and not a trace of self-pity. "It's the same as sparring. You learn how to take a punch to override your instinct."

  It made perfect sense, but that didn't mean Mike felt better about it. His anger towards KWA had settled down to background radiation. Now it flared again.

  He felt that breathless, bursting sensation rise in the back of his throat. It was every moment that he'd been shot at or threatened. If anyone laid a finger on Ian, he'd break their goddamn neck. This was the legacy that Kinnery had imposed on Ian, the kind of thing the kid had to do to deal with his condition. It was hard to see it as a talent right then.

  "Under control, then," Mike said, playing things down.

  Ian nodded, studying his palm. "Sorted."

  KW-HALBAUER, LANSING

  NOVEMBER, ONE WEEK BEFORE THANKSGIVING.

  "I know Mr Weaver's busy." Dru's you-will-obey voice usually worked a lot better on the phone than in person. "This is urgent. Just walk into the meeting and put the note in front of him. It'll take you twenty seconds, and believe me, that'll be less disruptive to your life than what'll happen if he doesn't get it."

  It was harder to get face time with Weaver lately. The new company was spread over almost double the number of locations, and this week he was at the old Halbauer HQ in Minneapolis. Dru was running out of time. If the boy in the video was anything to do with Kinnery, he might already have been moved, but he'd leave a trail that she might be able to follow. She had to make her move now.

  "I'm going to keep ringing back," Dru said, "and if you stop taking the calls, then I'll start from the top and work down until somebody obliges me. We're working for the same company, for goodness' sake."

  Dru could hear the ice forming on the line. "One moment." There was no please. "I'll put you on hold."

  "Thank you." But the "you" got cut off, and Dru found herself listening to Vivaldi.

  She was pretty sure she used to be more diplomatic on the phone. Bumping up against hard corporate objects over the last few months had added sharp corners to her rather than rounding them off. She'd watched her supposed betters flout the law with the expectation of getting away with it, and now she wondered just how many rules she needed to obey herself. She recalled her first term at college, her behavioural studies class; imagine, her professor had said, if everyone said screw the law and did as they pleased. There'd be no way of enforcing any rules at all, nowhere near enough police or troops to keep order. Laws only worked because humans generally preferred to fit in and followed the herd norm for good or ill.

  Dru just wished that that he'd spent more time teaching the class about the individuals who created the norms. Some days she felt that she only had to push the door a little harder and it would swing open into a world of chaos where she had no limits on her behaviour. It no longer seemed like a bad thing, either.

  I can break the rules. And the bigger the rule, the less chance I've got of being punished. That's what I'm seeing every day now.

  Vivaldi was suddenly cut off mid-allegro. "Dru, it's Shaun."

  "Hi. Can anyone hear you?"

  "No, I thought this might be sensitive. I'm in a private office."

  "I'll keep it short, Mr Weaver." Dru stuck to the oblique code. "I have a lead on our material that I need to follow up, and it'll mean being out of town. Can you cover my absence with HR? It overlaps with my vacation, but not completely, and it could take a couple of weeks. I'd hate this to founder on over-zealous administration."

  Weaver understood the term material. "Certainly. You sound like this is significant."

  Was he really asking for detail? She picked her way through the recurring minefield of what he might not thank her for being told, and what she needed to conceal for her own sake.

  "It's sufficiently striking for me not to ignore, and it's current. I don't even know if I can get a flight this close to the holiday, but I'm going to try."

  "How current?"

  Now she had to commit herself. Suspect was too risky on an unsecured line. "There's a chance I might be able to locate a subject."

  "Okay." Weaver got the point. "Dru, if you do locate the material, I want you to call me immediately – any time, on my private cell if need be – and not take any further action. Just observe. Your task is to find it and give me a location. That's all. If this is what we've been thinking all along, it's going to require specialist handling."

  Dru got the feeling that she should have undersold it. It was too late now; she'd stoked him up and there was no point in trying to backtrack. But she was doing what he'd asked – just observing. Nobody had to know, least of all a senator who could probably create ripples the size of a tsunami for small fry like her.

  There was something that bothered her, though. Weaver still hadn't said how he planned to extract the stolen material.

  Damn, listen to me, I'm all euphemism. But I need to know he's not getting into anything illegal that's going to backfire on me. Specialist handling. Sure. What the hell is that?

  She decided to risk asking the question on an unsecured line. "How specialist, Mr Weaver?"

  He paused for a few seconds. "Need to know works both ways. For the same reasons."

  "Yes, I need to know what I'm letting myself in for."

  "You're not at risk. Just call me if you find anything and let me handle the rest."

  "Understood."

  "If you're that concerned, would it be wiser for me to know where you're going?"

  If Weaver had taken any notice of the mall video, he might already have gone through the same steps that Dru had. She dithered. If she found a thief – which was all this would be, no matter how unbelievable the results – then she certainly wasn't going to perform a citizen's arrest. She couldn't detain a grown man, or anybody else for that matter. They might even be armed. She'd want to hand over the task.

  Who would Weaver trust with the information? Maybe he's decided to call in the FBI after all.

  Her biggest fear was that she was wrong, she'd cobbled together totally unrelated facts, and all she'd manage to do would be to upset a powerful politician who could grind her underfoot and Clare's future with her. But she still needed to know.

  "If I were to call you and say I'd found what we were looking for, and exactly where I thought it was, who would you call?"

  Weaver paused. "The one man who has the ability to resolve this without any embarrassment to anyone. He'd want to be discreetly helpful, believe me."

  Kinnery. Weaver's got him by the balls. If I find his mule, then Weaver calls him and says it's all over, so how about bringing the guy in and talking terms. It stays in-house. No police, no FBI, no FDA, no whatever. It has to be that. There's nobody else he could call. He really wouldn't do anything physical. We're not in that kind of business.

  It made sense. It was a clean fit with Weaver's motives and methods. It made her feel better. "I might be wrong, Mr Weaver, or it might be a dead end."

  "It's a risk we all take. So, where is this?"

  "East Coast," Dru couldn't say Maine in case Weaver was on the same page. She'd look insane for believing the video, and if he knew something she didn't, she was only giving him more pieces for his own
personal puzzle that might not turn out well for her. "I'll call you right away if I get a result."

  "Okay. Safe journey, Dru. And I do appreciate that you're disrupting your holiday plans for this."

  After she'd rung off, Dru wished yet again that she'd recorded the conversation, simply to check that she hadn't compromised herself or the company. She was pretty sure she hadn't blown it, though.

  What she had blown was family harmony, or as much as existed at this time of the year. Larry had been told to stand by to have Clare for the holidays, but for longer than he'd planned. He wasn't happy. He never was. Clare took it pretty well, but she was at the age where having Mom around wasn't the be-all and end-all of Thanksgiving.

  Dru couldn't back out of the trip now. The emotional blackmail from Larry would fall on deaf ears. She managed to book a flight to Bangor for a few days before Thanksgiving, then rented a car and rang around the Westerham area to find a room.

  And if I can't get a room, I'll sleep in the goddamn car. Might be good practice for when I get fired for this.

  She had to be as near the Braynes' home and neighbourhood as possible to do all that waiting and watching. But she did find a room; now things were set in concrete. She charged it to her own card to avoid going through the travel agency, temporarily covering her tracks. Now she had to go through with this, if only to claim back the expenses.

  Dru dropped Clare off at Larry's the night before the flight and he invited her to stay for supper. That was a bad sign: usually, he wasn't even chatty. Dru wondered what Clare had been saying. Maybe he'd totally misread her recent makeover as some overture to getting back together. She stood on the doorstep and started edging backwards to indicate she really had to leave.

  "Clare's upset that you won't be back before the holiday," he said.

  "She's not upset. She's got you to herself. It makes her feel grown-up." Dru took a few more steps backwards. Larry never did take any notice of body language. "Look, I've got an early flight. Non-negotiable. Entertain your daughter, and cherish what time you have with her before she grows up and turns into me."

  "It is a man, isn't it?" Larry raised his eyes from hers, looking at her hair with disapproval. "I didn't miss the new look, by the way. Is that why you won't tell Clare where you're going?"