“Hello to you, too, Princess,” said the driver.
“You’re in the back,” said Lia when Dean tried to follow.
“Don’t worry. She’s always on the rag,” said the driver, a large blond man of about twenty-three wearing a Yankees cap. Dean walked to the back of the truck, half-expecting that it would take off and leave him stranded. He opened it and got in; cabbage leaves were strewn across the floor and there was an old wooden vegetable crate, but otherwise the rear was bare. Dean shut the door behind him and made his way toward the front, which was open except for a wide double bar with hooks for securing cargo.
“Name’s Magnor-Karr,” said the driver, twisting around from the back. He stuck a thick hand out to Dean. “First name’s Kjartan, except nobody calls me that.”
“What do they call you?”
“Asshole,” said Lia.
“Tommy,” said the driver. “Or Karr.” His hand was callused, as if he did heavy work. His accent sounded as if he were from Hoboken. He reminded Dean of a kid who’d worked the counter for him at one of his gas stations before his overextended business went south.
“Charlie Dean.”
“You’re our baby-sitter, huh?”
“Not really,” said Dean.
“Can we please get moving?” said Lia.
Karr rolled his eyes for Dean, then turned and put the truck into reverse. He didn’t seem to use the mirrors and wasn’t going particularly slow.
“If we go off into the swamp, I’m not pushing,” said Lia.
“Not a problem,” answered Karr. “We’ll sink so fast you won’t have a chance to escape.”
“Hmmmph,” said Lia, crossing her arms.
“You up to speed?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said.
“I meant you, Charlie Dean,” said Karr. “You like ‘Charlie,’ right?”
“If you’re a friend,” said Lia, in the sarcastic tone of a fifteen-year-old girl dissing friends at the mall.
Karr laughed. He turned around—not to look where he was going but to talk to Dean. “You follow baseball?”
“Sometimes.”
“Man, I wish the Yankees would bring that kid Rosen up, don’t you think? Kid throws ninety-seven miles an hour, and he’s a friggin’ lefty. I mean, what are they waiting for?”
“If you’re going to talk about baseball, I’ll just barf now,” said Lia.
“Don’t do it on your clothes,” said Karr. “We don’t need to see you naked.”
“You’d give your right nut to see me without clothes.”
“Trashy mouth, too. All the ugly ones are like that. Some sort of compensation thing going on there,” said Karr. He turned and whipped the wheel of the van so hard Dean flew against the side. As he struggled to regain his balance, Dean realized they hadn’t tumbled off the path but merely come to a paved road. The van’s tires squealed as they accelerated down it.
“You’re some driver,” said Dean.
“Thanks. I can cook, too.”
“A real man’s man,” sneered Lia.
As if in answer, Karr veered sharply to the right, following the road. Dean once more lost his balance, this time slamming against the back of the seats.
“God, kid,” he said. “Give me some warning. Jeez. You drive like that for your boss?”
Tommy laughed.
“Is that where we’re going?” added Dean, sitting back up.
“How’s that?” asked Tommy.
“Are we going to see your boss? The person running the mission,” said Dean.
Karr laughed again. “I’m the boss, Charlie. I know you’ve been in the dark the whole way out,” he added. “Don’t take it personally. It’s kind of a culture thing, you know?”
“Not really,” said Dean.
Lia turned around. “You wouldn’t think they’d put a jerk like this in charge of sensitive operations, would you? He looks barely competent to handle a candy store.”
“I’d love a few hours in a good candy store,” said Karr.
“He’s the head of operations in Russia, Charlie Dean,” said Lia. She had a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “Looks like you put your foot in it, huh?”
“Ah, give the guy a break,” Karr told her. “He’s probably jet-lagged all to hell. You slept on the Antonov.”
“How do you know?”
“You always sleep on it.”
Dean felt as if he’d hitched a ride with a couple of college kids heading back to the dorms. He told himself he probably wasn’t quite old enough to be their father. He also told himself he’d made a mistake agreeing to help Hadash.
“This isn’t like the desert thing you were involved in,” Karr told him over his shoulder. “This is just a quick look at some metal.”
“What do you know about the desert?” Dean asked.
“Charlie, I know everything about you. I can tell you how much money you owed when the banks foreclosed on your gas stations. I can even tell you which companies were working together to put you out of business.” Karr looked back and smiled. He seemed to believe that looking where he was driving was optional; he looked at Dean as he continued to speak, though the van must have been doing at least fifty miles an hour. “You helped nail a bunch of scumbag terrorists in the Middle East. Which proves you’re resourceful.”
It also proved that he was a sucker—Dean had signed on to the job because he’d bought a sob story from a woman who claimed her parents had been killed by the terrorists and she was looking for revenge. In fact, the hit had been set up by French and American intelligence services—probably, he now realized, including the NSA.
“It also proves he’s a mercenary,” said Lia.
“Nah. The gas stations were in hock and he needed the money,” said Karr. “Right, Charlie?”
Dean shrugged. It had been more than that.
“See, the thing you don’t know about Charlie Dean,” Karr told Lia, “is that he’s an honorable guy. When one of his part-timers needed an operation, he put him on the full-time payroll and paid his health insurance. Of course, the guy never really came to work at all, because he was too sick by then.”
“What a sport,” said Lia.
“And then the case blew the crap out of his insurance rating, so he ended up having to pay even more. That’s one of the reasons he went under. Right, Charlie?”
“No.”
Truthfully, it hadn’t added much to the general downward spiral of his business, which had in fact managed to eat through most of the two million he’d gotten for the Middle East assignment. The stock market took care of the rest.
“I’m just not a very good businessman, I guess,” Dean said.
“What are you good at?” Lia asked.
“Come on, Princess, stop riding the guy,” said Karr. “She’s just busting your chops because she has a crush on you.”
“Fuck off.”
“See if I’m lying,” laughed Karr.
Part of him liked Karr. He was a big, garrulous kid, the kind Dean would have hung out with as a young man. But he was a kid, and his offhand manner implied to Dean that he was more than a bit full of himself. Dean had seen firsthand what happened to such types—and, all too often, the people who were following them on a mission.
And frankly, it rankled a bit that someone so young would be in charge of anything important. Dean wasn’t sure he would have let Tommy run one of his gas stations.
Well, maybe.
“I sold my business,” Dean said. “It wasn’t foreclosed.”
“Not a problem,” said Karr.
“So you know who I am—who are you?”
“I wouldn’t tell him jack,” said Lia.
“Why not?” said Karr.
Lia didn’t answer.
“Relax, Princess. Dean’s straight up or he wouldn’t be here. Right, Charlie?”
“Yeah.”
“I came to Desk Three from the men in black, security team. Actually, I have an engineering degree, but I haven’
t used it in, I don’t know, a million years.”
“He designed toilet seats,” snickered Lia.
Karr ignored her. “They told me they wanted me for the degree, but I think it was because I’m bigger than the average bear.”
Karr laughed.
“You’re pretty young to have an engineering degree,” said Dean. “Isn’t that a master’s?”
“Very good, Charlie. I got into RPI when I was fifteen. What sucked, though, was that I missed the high school baseball team. I’d screwed up my knee anyway.”
“So what are you, twenty-five?”
“Charlie’s writing a fucking book,” said Lia.
“Twenty-three. How ’bout yourself?”
“Twice that,” answered Lia. “Just about.”
Dean, suddenly feeling defensive about his age, let the error stand. “So what are we doing?” he asked.
“I’m kinda getting to that,” said Karr. He took off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his thick hair. Not only did he consider looking where he was going optional, but he wasn’t doctrinaire about having his hands on the wheel, either. “Basically, we have this problem. We lost an airplane the other day, and we’re not entirely sure why.”
“Maybe it broke,” said Dean.
“It wouldn’t have just broken,” said Lia.
“Maybe it broke,” said Karr, putting his cap back on and returning his hands to the wheel. “Anyway, what we have to do, number one, is make sure it was fried to a crisp on the way down. That’s mission one—look for one major crispy critter in the tundra. Mission number two—maybe—is see if there’s any clue about who or what shot it down.”
“Why maybe?” asked Dean.
“Well, because if the plane really was burned to a crisp, there shouldn’t be any clues left, you follow?”
“Your fancy gizmos can’t figure it all out for you?” said Dean.
“Meow,” said Lia.
“You a Luddite, Charlie?” asked Karr.
“I’m not a Luddite.”
“Technology,” said Lia in a sententious voice, “is a force multiplier, not a replacement for human intervention.”
She began to laugh uncontrollably.
“She’s making fun of the boss,” explained Karr.
“Who do you really work for?” asked Charlie. “The CIA?”
Lia’s laugh deepened.
“I figure you’re the Special Collection Service, CIA working for the NSA,” said Dean.
“Wow, he knows his history,” Karr told Lia.
“I know Division D,” said Dean. Division D was the CIA group charged with assassinations. He had worked with two members of it back in Vietnam and immediately afterward, though only as a “trainer” in sniping techniques. If the truth be told, the men he worked with knew at least as much as he did. Dean was a bit hazy on the connection between the Special Collection Service and Division D, but he believed that the Special Collection Service was an arm of Division D. Or vice versa.
“Well, listen, Charlie, if it makes you feel more comfortable, think of us as Special Collection on steroids,” said Karr.
He turned around and stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the club.”
Not sure if the kid was kidding or not—he seemed to be—Dean took Karr’s hand and shook it quickly, hoping he’d turn back around and pay attention to where they were going.
“We’re one big happy family,” said Karr.
“Pull-ease,” said Lia.
“Except for the Princess. She’s a loaner from Delta Force.”
“I didn’t know they let women in,” said Dean.
“They don’t. She’s a transvestite.”
“Hardy-har-har,” said Lia. “A lot’s changed since you were in the service, Charlie Dean. Who was your commanding officer, George Washington?”
“I think it was U. S. Grant.”
They had come to an intersection, the first Dean had noticed. Karr stopped the truck. “Okay, Princess, you need freshening up or what?”
“No.”
“Charlie, you got to take a leak?”
“No.”
“Good. Then we’ll go straight to Numto.”
Karr threw the truck back into gear and kicked onto the road, spitting mud and gravel as he did. Dean had learned by now to hang on, and managed to keep his balance as Karr steadily and quickly brought the van to cruising speed. Dean couldn’t see the speedometer from where he was, but he figured they must be going eighty at least.
And that was miles per hour, not kilometers.
“What’s in Numto?” Dean asked.
“We think a piece of our plane. Actually, it’s about ten miles beyond Numto,” added Karr. His voice had become subtly more serious. “We’ll stop in an hour or so and get some food. It will taste like shit, but you’re going to want to eat it. After that, you want to try and catch some sleep back there. We work mostly at night, except when we work during the day, so your body clock is going to be fried, if it isn’t already. Makes some people grumpy. Unless they were born that way. Oh, one more thing. I have a request.”
“What’s that?”
Karr turned around and grinned. “Don’t get bumped off, okay? I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I’ll do my best,” Dean told him.
“Good man.”
9
William Rubens shifted on the ornate seat in the White House Map Room, doing his best not to glance once more at his Rolex. This was the reason he hated meeting the president, especially here; overbooked, Jeffrey Marcke ran perpetually behind schedule.
He had been summoned without explanation, though Rubens suspected it was for an update on the mission to check the Wave Three plane’s wreckage. Two senators had made a polite though terse request to the CIA for information on the Russian laser system that had been Wave Three’s target; the request had undoubtedly been kicked over to the White House, where the president himself would make the final call on what to tell the legislators.
A mountain of projects awaited Rubens back in Crypto City; Third Wave was the most prominent but hardly the only one. To have to kill a half hour sitting across from ancient but nonetheless tacky furniture and shellacked maps did more than waste Rubens’ time—it offended his sense of aesthetic balance.
George Hadash entered the room, sweating so badly that he wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Decided to hold a press conference on the new Energy Bill,” said the National Security Director. “What a nightmare. Come on.”
Hadash led Rubens around and out to the south lawn, past a cordon of aides and Secret Service agents, and down to the horseshoe pit, which was not far from the tennis court. The president had doffed his coat and tie but was otherwise still dressed in his standard work clothes: well-tailored suit and broadcloth shirt with sturdy-soled, rather plain black shoes. The pit dated back several presidencies, though it hadn’t gotten much publicity until Marcke remarked in a Time interview soon after taking office that tossing the iron around was as therapeutic as “punching a wall.”
Which apparently he regarded as a special pleasure.
“Naturally,” said Marcke as his last horseshoe fell away from the post. “How are you, Billy?”
“Fine, Mr. President.”
“Better than me, I suspect.” Marcke smiled wanly, then retrieved his horseshoes. He pitched all four—he played without an opponent—before speaking again as he walked back to the other end of the pit. “We’re waiting for Bob Freeman.”
“Oh,” said Rubens nonchalantly.
Freeman was the head of the FBI. Meeting with him could mean any of a number of things—most deliciously, that the Bureau was trying to track a double agent in the CIA and needed technical assistance.
Of course, it could also mean that a member of his own agency had gone bad, but Rubens dismissed the far-fetched notion out of hand.
Marcke let the horseshoe fly, nailing a ringer. “Have we recovered Wave Three yet?” asked the president, sizing up another toss.
/> “Still working on it, sir.” He didn’t bother correcting the president’s misstatement—the mission was not to recover the Wave Three plane but merely to make sure it was sterile.
The president’s shot sailed high, bouncing at the end of the box.
“Here’s Mr. Freeman,” said Hadash, pointing back toward the lawn.
“Very good.” The president continued to pitch his shoes.
Rubens was surprised to see that accompanying Freeman was his own boss, Admiral Brown. Brown had just returned from South America. Rubens wasn’t sure whether he had been summoned to the meeting as well or was just stopping by to report on the trip.
Probably the former, Rubens decided. Undoubtedly Freeman had gone to him first, not realizing the way things truly worked.
“Mr. Freeman, hello,” said the president as the horseshoe clanked against the metal pole. “Admiral Brown—you’re back from your trip.”
“This morning,” said Brown. He nodded to Rubens.
“Did you catch the press conference, Bobby?” asked the president.
Freeman said something about how remarkably well it had gone.
“Very nice of you to lie,” said Marcke. He tossed another ringer. “It went over like a fart in church. They’re going to hammer me on the Energy Bill. Not a doubt about it. Bob, you know Billy Rubens, right?”
Rubens grimaced—the president’s use of “Billy” would now make Freeman feel as if he were entitled to use it as well.
“Mr. Rubens.” Freeman stuck out his hand.
“Mr. Freeman.”
“I’m a great admirer of the NSA,” said Freeman.
“The FBI does a fine job as well,” said Rubens.
The president retrieved his horseshoes. “Now that that’s established—Mr. Hadash?”
“There have been some questions raised about Congressman Greene’s demise,” said Hadash, starting in an unusually roundabout way. He paused to add a few qualifiers, then said something about Congressman Greene’s contributions to the country.
Rubens folded his arms across his chest, utterly surprised by the topic, though naturally he endeavored not to reveal anything except boredom. He listened with half of his brain and turned the other half to self-examination: How could he have allowed himself to be blindsided?
Obviously because the matter was absurd. The accidental death of a congressman, even from the president’s own party, was hardly a ripple on the ocean compared to the weighty matters the administration faced.
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