“Yes. Until the Council meets, she can’t have any contact with you,” Lori said. “This means we can’t even start negotiations until the end of March.”
“I can’t say I’m pleased,” Gilgamesh said. Life in Detroit depressed him. Everyone was cranky, everything took too much time, and everywhere he turned he found another anomaly or mystery. “With your help, though, this might even work.” He needed to free Newton, one of the many responsibilities he had picked up in Detroit.
“Have more faith,” Lori said, a true Crow whisper. He heard a muffled thump over the phone, then another. “Holy moly!” She dropped the phone, yelling out “Attack!” as she ran. He heard one gunshot, then another, and a confusion of voices. Clattering. Another muffled thump. Some distant gunfire.
The phone went dead.
The panic took Gilgamesh, instant climax stress. He forgot his bicycle and sprinted away, running as fast as he could through the rain toward Kali’s home.
Henry Zielinski: March 23, 1969 – March 25, 1969
Hank Zielinski put down the graph he couldn’t parse and picked up the ringing phone. “Hello?” His desk overflowed with paperwork, the bane of creativity. He hated paperwork, even after counting in the power it gave him over his small research lab, but at least the bureaucratic morass was neatly stacked. Instead, he had the data on the Arm nutrition program spread out all over his desk. Too preliminary to talk to anyone about, alas – he really needed more Arms willing to cooperate. So far, it appeared the biggest danger to the Transform cause, at this instant, was Carol’s sweet tooth. He did suspect he was wasting his time trying to organize this rather simple project.
Not that he could do any real work this morning, not with his lab crated up and ready for an emergency move, should it prove necessary.
“Doc, we have a situation.” It took a moment for Zielinski to place the voice. Tom, agitated.
“Yes?”
“Can you come over to Carol’s?” Tom said.
Zielinski completely forgot about his creeping avalanche of papers. “Yes. I’ll be right over.”
“Hello, Dr. Zielinski,” a ghostly voice whispered. Hank turned and found Guru Hephaestus walking beside him. He nearly leapt out of his Mezlan Fiore shoes. “Tom’s in Carol’s office.”
Hank tried to quiet his racing heart. His nerves felt like he was back in the Korean War, except the war never required precautions like this. He had checked his car for bombs, his mirror for people trailing him, the windows around him for snipers. Visions of assassination attempts haunted his mind.
Now Hephaestus decided to surprise him. Crows. Crows just did things, like appear out of nowhere, far too often. Impossible to deal with. He knew from experience not to bother even asking Guru Hephaestus not to surprise him in the future. Hephaestus would just give him a funny look and deny he did any such thing.
Tom sat at Carol’s desk, looking through her papers, files pulled from the credenza behind him. Not a good sign. Carol wouldn’t even permit Tom to sit in her chair, much less paw through her office, and Tom knew it. Something was badly wrong.
“Doc, have a seat,” Tom said. Hank sat. The office was elegant and functional, with a good oak desk, matching credenza and a couple of leather office chairs. The early-morning sun peeked through the blinds into the dim room. “Carol never called in last night, and neither did Gilgamesh. We can’t get in contact with either of them.”
Hank checked the time, nearly nine in the morning. The confrontation with Haggerty should have been over by now. He turned to Hephaestus, who had stepped back into a shadowed corner to become nearly invisible. The Crow Guru shrugged, and Hank turned back to Tom. “No word on the Haggerty affair?”
“Not a thing,” Tom said.
“Have you made any phone calls?”
“Only to our people, and to Gilgamesh’s various contact points,” Tom said. Phone booths spread out over Detroit.
Hank nodded. “Do you see any problems if I make some phone calls from here?”
“I’ve had Ricky check the inside and outside for phone taps. Nothing,” Tom said. “Go ahead.” Tom waved his hand at the phone, buried under piles of papers, and then paused. “We may have a problem with Dick. He’s panicked.” Dick Svetsrichen was Carol’s Houston operations manager, and he didn’t impress either Tom or Zielinski. Tom didn’t think Dick had the balls to hold up to the rigors of his position, and Hank agreed, though he wouldn’t have used the term ‘balls’. Carol considered Dick a success story, though, and said she wouldn’t drop him unless he screwed up. There must be something face saving they could ease Dick into, Zielinski thought. Bookkeeping or something. Perhaps rearranging the office plants.
“You might need to get someone to calm Dick down,” Hank said as he extracted the phone from under the papers and pulled it toward him. He pulled several cards from Carol’s rolodex, all numbers he kept in his own office but didn’t have memorized.
Tom frowned as Zielinski started dialing. “If the Boss has a problem, we don’t want to alert…”
“Relax. I’m going to be calling various contacts of mine, and I’m going to be real careful.” Tom didn’t look any happier for the reassurance.
He first called Focus Wendy Mann, in Detroit. Keaton’s contact point. She hadn’t had any contact with Keaton over the last day, but Keaton had missed a morning appointment. Not the first time that had happened, though. Still, Hank began to get worried.
Hank next tried Boston. Lori’s lab phone was out of service, which sent his heart racing and put goose pimples on his arms.
“Tom, call Burnstead on the other line,” Hank said, trying to ignore a tightness in his chest. Their useless media guy had to be useful for something. Hank often didn’t understand Carol’s recruitment criteria. Not surprising. She was an Arm. “I want anything and everything on Transforms in the news today.”
Without realizing, he found himself standing. Hank sat himself back down again, but he couldn’t stop his panicky breathing or quiet his adrenaline-shaky hands. He tried the five Inferno phone numbers he knew of. Busy. Every one of them. His hand got so sweaty he could barely hold the phone.
“Shit!” Tom yelled from the living room, where the nearest phone on the other line was located. “Someone firebombed Rizzari’s lab last night. One dead, a male Transform, from a gunshot wound. No other useful information.”
The world spun around Hank’s head, surprising him with the depth of his feelings for the Focus. Was this the enemy’s big attack? Alone in his bed at night, he dreaded a preemptive strike by the opposition. Except, firebombings and gunplay didn’t sound like Rogue Crow tactics to him. On the other hand, who was he to say that Rogue Crow couldn’t play multiple games at once? For instance, Rogue Crow went after Arms by informing the FBI and police of their locations. Who knew what tactics he would use against Focuses?
Or against intractable doctors.
Hank distrusted coincidences.
He called Tonya. Busy signal. He tried again and got through to Delia on the third try.
“This is Dr. Madison,” he said. Delia knew his current false identity. “Emergency. I need to speak to Tonya.”
“So you’ve been hit, too?” Delia said.
He winced. “You know about Focus Rizzari?”
Delia hissed. “No,” she said. “Polly and Tonya got threats yesterday from Focus Schrum: if they didn’t back down from the planned presentation at the Council meeting she would release all the blackmail information she’s collected on them. They stood firm, Schrum released the information, and they’re starting to deal with the fallout. Also, someone firebombed both Focus Bentlow’s household and Focus Webb’s household last night, and both places burned to the ground. Focus Fingleman, Focus Claunch and Focus Teas all deny any involvement and now support the presentation at the Council meeting. Tonya’s on the other line with Focus Teas right now. What happened to Focus Rizzari?”
“We don’t know,” Hank said. “Just a newspaper report about her lab getti
ng firebombed last night, and one Transform death.”
“I’ll pass the news along,” Delia said.
“Thanks.” Hank hung up and turned to Tom and Hephaestus. “It’s the first Focuses, or, more precisely, a faction of them including Schrum and not including Fingleman, Claunch and Teas.”
“I’ve got to warn Guru Arpeggio,” Hephaestus said, panicky. Hank blinked and Hephaestus was gone.
Tom sat back down in Carol’s chair. He rubbed his temples and glared at the pile of papers on the desk. “What do we do? I could use a few minutes of panic time in here, myself.”
Hank rubbed at his own head. He had a headache starting, and it looked to be a beaut. “Uh huh. I’m going to Boston. You should stay here and hold down the fort. Pretend you don’t hear my next phone call.”
Hank dialed. “Mr. Paul Langdoc, calling for the Madonna,” he said, in French. If anyone knew how to get him into Boston without stumbling into a dozen first Focus traps, it was Anne-Marie. She had helped him do it before.
He hadn’t forgotten the fact that a first Focus faction still had a contract out on his life, none of the faction named Teas, Claunch or Fingleman.
---
Occum drove the white panel truck to the back of Cooper’s Seafood, did the Crow signaling thing, and waited. Hank wore his Dr. Wilma Orza disguise, patiently counting the minutes until he could get out of it. Especially the bra. He sat, squished, between Occum and Duke Jeremy Hoskins. Luckily, Hoskins was in his human form, and save for a faint reddening of the skin, a slight saltwater smell and his six feet plus of muscle and sinew, he passed as human. The rest of the Chimeras in Occum’s Noble household stayed in their beast forms and rode in the back of the panel truck, ready for a fight. They most certainly couldn’t pass as human.
The Nobles were ready for combat. Aching for combat. They also had some unkind things to say about the Boston Crow contingent, apparently scared out of town by the attack, or some preliminaries to the attack.
“Sky’s on his way, but Doc, he’s got Kali with him,” Occum said. “Idiot! Shithead! Last thing we need is a fight.”
Hank sighed. Twelve hours of dancing his way through five airports got him to Portland, Maine, where Occum picked him up. Moving incognito in this part of the country had gotten hairy, with active student protests and sit-ins going on in many of the local Massachusetts colleges and universities. The idiot media tried to connect the attack on Rizzari to the student protest movement, but their overreach wasn’t the least bit convincing.
Occum and the Nobles were more edgy than he had ever seen them before. Paranoid, untrustworthy of anyone, especially other Transforms. He didn’t know why, just that they had been on an untrustworthiness kick since shortly after Christmas. If they didn’t consider they owed him the world, he wouldn’t have gotten their help.
“Let me out,” Hank said, trying to find a way to help. “I should be able to talk them out of anything rash.” Occum snorted.
Duke Hoskins rolled down his window, and took a long sniff of the alley’s dank air. “No other humans nearby, sir. You sure you don’t need protecting from the Arm?”
Hank’s payment to Occum for picking him up and bringing him to Boston had been two hours of Occum pumping Hank for whatever bits of his latest research might be applicable to the Nobles. Occum was itching to get back to his Noble household, now in New Hampshire, and try all the new things he had thought up based on Hank’s information.
“I trust her,” Hank said. “You should as well. We’re all on the same side here.”
“That’s an unwarranted assumption if I’ve ever heard one, with all the crazy shit that’s been going on,” Occum said. What ‘crazy shit’, though? Occum wouldn’t say. “You go on your way, Doc.”
He slipped out past Occum – slipping out past the huge Noble wasn’t physically possible – and he went to stand out in front of the truck, his eyes having a hard time with the night. In a few moments, Keaton appeared in front of him, hands on her hips. He felt Sky’s hot eyes on him from somewhere close by.
“Why am I not surprised?” Keaton said, having recognized him first thing, no problem. She poked at his disguise. “You make one ugly woman,” pause, “especially since you need a shave.”
Yes, well, so his disguise could use a little work. “Yes, ma’am. Would you mind if I sent the Nobles on their way?”
“Might as well,” Keaton said. “I swear every time I try and set up a meeting with them, something comes up. I need them for the wedding fight, but something’s gone wrong and I can’t figure out what.”
Hank waved at Occum, who in the midnight darkness now appeared to be a human-like Noble. Crow illusion tricks. The Crow backed his truck out of the alley, and sped off.
“I couldn’t get anything out of them, either,” Hank said, exasperated. “Something happened, and I don’t know what. There’s no way in hell I’m going to get an invite to their current lair.”
“Yah,” Keaton said, turning away and kicking at some loose asphalt. “You want a lift?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Keaton picked him up sack of potatoes style and off they went to Inferno. Just like old times, back in the days when Keaton was the only living American Arm and Hank the only doctor she trusted. Keaton had gotten much better over the years at carrying him; when she finally put him down in the poolside cabana, he didn’t feel like he had gone three rounds with Joe Frazier.
Sky appeared out of nowhere just after he landed. “She’s okay, doc,” he said. “I’ve seen her, but Inferno’s not letting me stay with her.” Damn. The attackers had hit the Focus. He had feared this from the start, when he couldn’t to get through to Inferno. From the tenor of Sky’s voice, Lori’s injury wasn’t minor.
“Hank knows Focuses are tough,” Keaton said. “He wrote the book on that, years ago.”
“Eh, really?” Sky said. “I should have fucking guessed.” So Sky wasn’t immune to the Keaton vulgarity effect. Interesting. Someday, when Keaton was in an especially tolerant mood, he planned to spring it on her as her contribution to the potential capabilities of Arm charisma.
“Where’s Carol? How did her confrontation with Haggerty go?”
“She’s been and gone, a nicely humbled and tagged Haggerty in tow,” Sky said. “She did some fancy healing of the Focus right here in the cabana, about six hours ago.”
Keaton pointed out a dark patch on a table, barely visible in the lights from Bob’s barn. “Rizzari was still bleeding when Carol did her thing. She’s one Focus who won’t stay in her goddamn healing trances long enough. Sky and I decided to stay out of Carol’s way until she started thinking again. Which Carol did once she stabilized Rizzari.”
Hank frowned, tried to work out times in his head. “The Focus couldn’t have been in any danger before Carol started.”
“How do you know?” Sky said.
“Later,” Hank said. “It’s difficult to explain.” If the Focus had been in any real danger from her wounds, her woman Transforms would have been huddled around her in a juice grope, with the men facing out, shooting at anything that moved. It would have been a bloodbath.
Hank turned to Keaton. “What shape is Carol in, ma’am?”
“You mean, did I feed Carol her fucking guts when she asked me if I had anything to do with the attack?” Keaton said, and tapped Hank on the forehead. “You don’t need to pull on your tag just to get me to answer a question like that.”
“The etiquette in this situation is difficult to figure, ma’am,” Hank said.
Keaton shook her head. “I just let her see the truth. Afterwards, she went and found a kill, and then she and Haggerty started rolling up the fucking organization who staged the attack, torturing them to see who was really behind it. Sky and I were going to do the roll-up as practice, but under the circumstances, I decided to assign the project to her.”
“Good,” Hank said. Giving Carol something positive to do would use up the testosterone load dumped into her system by the situation.
> “Doc, you’re as appalling as Kali, here,” Sky said. Hank blinked, waited. Keaton didn’t rip Sky’s head off for using her Crow nickname to her face. Hmmm. How close had these two most impossible Major Transforms become, anyway?
“You’re supposed to say ‘thanks’, Hank,” Keaton said. “That was a compliment.”
“Thanks,” Hank said. “Any idea where Gilgamesh is?”
“He’s on his way here in his oversized land yacht, I hope. I had to let him grab dross from the inside of my place to calm him down, and he wasn’t being the least bit functional or useful. He was on the phone with the Focus when her lab got hit.”
Hank nodded, wondering what that would do to a Crow, and how best to approach Inferno? How messed up were they going to be, anyway? If Carol healed the Focus…
---
Hank sat alone in his old dorm bed, lost in his thoughts. Kicking himself, mentally. Hard. Wondering if he suffered from a hard-wired reaction, or a culturally derived one. Remembering old times. A year ago he had lived here, never imagining the twists and turns his life would be taking in the days to come.
Someone knocked at the door. “Come in,” he said. He looked up and saw the Focus herself, followed by Terry, Tina and Tim. The Focus came in, leaving the three outside the room. Bodyguards. Inferno Transforms never did the bodyguard routine inside the household.
He was surprised they thought him safe enough to leave alone with the Focus.
The Focus came over, sat next to him, and took his hands in hers. “Jim didn’t suffer,” she said. “It was instant.”
Jim Simpson, one of his two roommates during the time he stayed in Inferno, was the Transform bodyguard killed in the attack. He was a good man, a hell of an engineer who could hear problems in an internal combustion engine, and a crafty poker player who tended to cross his legs when he bluffed.
Hank hadn’t even asked about the Transform who died. He had been so obsessed with the Focus he simply didn’t think of it. His roommate, his friend, and he hadn’t even asked.
All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Page 25