Sycamore 2

by Craig A. Falconer

  “Harry has his ways,” she said, smiling gently.

  Kurt knew it wouldn’t be fair to take their frustration out on Joyce since Harry so obviously had the final say. “Thanks for the pillows, anyway,” he said.

  “And the coffee,” Minter added.

  Joyce smiled again and left.

  Minter drank the piping hot coffee, which melted some of his anger. As soon as both cups were finished, though, the feeling came back.

  “Who actually does that?” he said. “What kind of asshole leaves two guys in a truck while he goes inside to relax? He has to be hiding something in there. Has to be.”

  Kurt shrugged. “We’re not just two guys, though. I probably wouldn’t invite us into my house.”

  “Whatever, man.”

  Kurt didn’t let the discussion go any further. He tried to take consolation from the fact that Harry had at least left the truck open, which he hoped would allow fresh air to clear the pungent odour of gasoline.

  Time passed slowly. Extended silences like this reminded Kurt and Minter that they weren’t friends, just two people thrown into a difficult situation with no one else to turn to. The only things they had in common were things they didn’t want to talk about: working with Amos, studying under Professor Walker, and being stuck in the back of this goddamn truck.

  Kurt played around with his phone — the old XK6, which he had been able to charge in the car — and Minter fell into his first sleep for 48 hours.

  When Joyce returned with a delicious looking two-course meal, both were pleasantly surprised to learn that almost two hours had gone by.

  Joyce offered them the chance to use the downstairs bathroom while Harry was upstairs in the shower. But the tone of her voice was frightened rather than sneaky, and neither Kurt nor Minter wanted to risk landing her in trouble with Harry, who was slowly being revealed as something of a domestic tyrant.

  They wolfed down their two courses and only had to wait another hour and a half for Harry to return with Kurt’s computer and a suitcase.

  “Time to go,” he said as he placed them in the truck. Kurt noticed that he had applied a padlock to the case. “No hard feelings?”

  “It’s fine,” Kurt said. Minter childishly refused to acknowledge Harry’s presence.

  “Good.” Harry reached up for the door. “Guess I’ll see you boys on the other side.”

  With no windows and no internet connection to amuse themselves, Kurt and Minter passed the time by playing some multiplayer games on the laptop. They tried chess for a while, but Minter didn’t come close to the kind of challenge Kurt was used to getting from Randy. Though Name The Song and 20 Questions were more competitive, they both grew tiresome.

  Nothing of note happened until 9pm when the daily SycaNews audio bulletin, which everyone heard through their in-earphones whether they wanted to or not, played on the Two-Way.

  The main story was something about a recently thwarted terrorist attack, specific enough to sound credible but vague enough for Kurt to see through it. All of the usual lines were there: CrimePrev agents raising the alarm; Seed-tracking allowing the police to catch the perps; law enforcement and elected officials thanking “Mr Amos and his team” for once again saving the day.

  This propaganda always left a sour taste in Kurt’s mouth, but right now he was just glad that the news hadn’t referenced Kurt Jacobs or Terrance Minion. On that front, no news remained the best news they could hope for.

  Kurt made himself comfortable on the pillows while Minter used Joyce’s flashlight to read one of Harry’s fishing magazines. Minter rarely displayed much emotion, but Kurt imagined that he too would be experiencing a transition from fear to excitement as their arrival inched closer and closer.

  Kurt closed his eyes and listened to the road passing by underneath. He slipped easily into the night.

  ~

  The next thing Kurt felt was Minter shaking him by the shoulders. He opened his eyes and saw morning light pouring into the truck. Harry stood outside, a mere silhouette against the brightness.

  Kurt sat up quickly. “Is this the place?” he asked.

  “Yup,” Harry said, “this is Barnford Park.” He pointed off to the side. “And that right there is Unit 7b.”

  Kurt moved towards Harry and looked out. Barnford Park was a small industrial park adjacent to Barnford Mall. The visually impressive mall dominated Kurt’s view until he followed Harry’s finger to the small units on the left. Most of the units Kurt could see were covered by corrugated pull-down shutters and looked like they had been for a long time.

  He saw 6a… closed. 6b… closed. 6c… closed.

  Then there was 7a. Not only was Unit 7a open, there were people milling around the entrance. Kurt was close enough to read the signage: “Simonsen & Sons: Secure Storage Solutions”, and also the smaller text underneath. Tellingly, this text had been changed from “Cash Accepted” to “Cash Only”, with the word “Only” handwritten on a taped-up sheet of white paper.

  “They seem like my kind of guys, huh?” Harry joked.

  “Yeah,” Kurt said absently. His eyes moved to the adjoining unit, 7b. It had similar signage to 7a — “Simonsen & Sons: Discreet Mail Solutions” … “Cash Only” — but that was where the similarities ended. While 7a looked fairly typical, what with it’s large windows and sliding doors, Unit 7b was almost entirely covered with the same silver shutters as so many of the other units. The only break in the shutters came in the form of a heavy-looking door in the middle. This door was silver, too, but it was smooth. Kurt couldn’t be sure without zooming in, but it looked like there was a keypad on the door rather than a physical lock.

  “Good job finding it,” Kurt said. “How did the timing work out?”

  “Two hours to spare,” Harry said with a smug grin.

  “And has anyone been?”

  “Just staff. A guy in a yellow shirt lifted the shutter from in front of the door just before 6am, then he unlocked the storage place next door. Two women arrived right around the same time, both in the same yellow shirts.”

  This was good news. Kurt knew there was no guarantee that Ernesto would come today, but at least they could be sure that they hadn’t missed him.

  “So I guess we just wait?” Harry said.

  Kurt nodded.

  “Do you want me to close the shutter and tell you when someone comes?”

  “No,” Minter said, joining the conversation. “We want to watch.”

  Harry looked to Kurt for confirmation. There was an element of risk involved in leaving the truck wide open, but Harry had parked side-on and at a safe distance. No one could possibly see Kurt or Minter unless they were hanging out of the truck, so Harry deferred to Kurt’s judgement.

  “Leave it open,” Kurt decided. “We might need to act quickly.”

  Harry agreed and went to rejoin Joyce up front. He was halfway there when he spotted a green car pulling up to Unit 7b. He called to tell Kurt.

  Kurt peeked his head out of the truck and looked. Sure enough, a man stepped out of the car and walked towards the door. Kurt zoomed right in. His UltraLenses easily made out the keypad and the angle allowed him to see it clearly even as the man stood at the door. The display above the numbers read: “ENTER BOX #”. The man entered 28.

  Kurt sat back. “Wrong guy,” he said to Harry.

  Harry returned to Joyce.

  Minter, though, still looked out at the man. Only when the man was inside did he turn to Kurt. “Lucky one of us is thinking straight,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Five seven nine five nine seven six five,” Minter said. “Write that down.”

  Kurt’s blank expression effectively repeated his last question.

  “It’s the guy’s entry code,” Minter explained. “Now we can get in.”

  “Since when do we want to get in?”

  Minter thought for a second. “At least now we can if we want to,” he said. He picked up the Two-Way, flicked it to a
ugmented, and looked outside again, ready to check for the man’s name when he re-emerged with his mail.

  “That’s a waste of time,” Kurt said. “And battery.”

  Minter didn’t reply, until suddenly he did. “Car car car car car!”

  Kurt hurried back to the edge of the truck. Sure enough, another car was pulling up.

  “You think it’s him?” Minter asked.

  “Don’t jinx it,” Kurt said.

  “I bet it’s him.”

  A woman stepped out of the car.

  Kurt sighed. “I told you not to jinx it!”

  “No profile,” Minter said. “Kurt, no profile.”

  Kurt moved beside Minter and looked at the Two-Way. He saw that the woman had very short hair and a prominent scar running from her ear to her neck. More importantly, as Minter suggested, she had no Sycamore profile.

  “Zoom in on the keypad,” Kurt said.

  Minter was already in the process of doing so. “You think she’ll press 44?” he asked.

  “If you jinx this…”

  “I bet she will,” Minter said.

  The woman scanned her peripherals to check that no one was watching. Fortunately, she didn’t look carefully enough to see two heads and a Two-Way peeking out of a truck parked some 200 metres behind her.

  She cupped the keypad with one hand but left more than enough room for the keys to remain visible from Kurt’s angle.

  “ENTER BOX #”, the screen instructed.

  The woman’s index finger moved to the keypad.

  Kurt’s heart quickened.

  She typed her number.

  44.

  7

  As soon as the woman entered the door, Kurt climbed out of the truck and hurried to the front.

  “It’s her,” he told Harry. “She typed in Box 44.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We zoomed in with the Two-Way.”

  Harry’s brow furrowed. “So this is it?”

  “This is it. Here’s what I need you to do: first, go over there with my backpack and wait outside the door. Then when she comes out, pretend to bump into her. Apologise. She’ll say don’t worry about it. Then you point to the truck and say this: “You don’t happen to be Box 44, do you?””

  “O-kay…” Harry said.

  “She’ll either say yes or ask why you’re asking,” Kurt continued. “Either way, tell her that you have a large package addressed to a Mr Palamino at Box 44. Make some small talk. Ask if he’s her husband.”

  Harry looked anxious. “Seems like a lot to remember.”

  “It’s not,” Kurt said. “You’re just pretending to be the delivery guy and saying you have a package for Ernesto. Then you just say that it came yesterday but was too big to fit in the locker, so you’re glad to run into her like this. Okay? She’ll come over to the truck and I’ll take it from there.”

  “What if I mess up?” Harry asked. This was the first time he had allowed himself to present any kind of weakness to Kurt. “What if she gets away?”

  “She’s not getting away,” Kurt insisted. “Worst comes to worst, I’ll come over. But with all these other people around, that’s a last resort.”

  Harry jumped out of the truck. “Where’s the backpack?”

  Kurt ran to get it and handed it to Harry. It was red, which at least provided some modicum of credibility to the idea that Harry was a delivery driver.

  Harry ran across the industrial park as quickly as he could. He arrived in plenty of time, even having twenty seconds to catch his breath.

  Kurt and Minter watched via the Two-Way from the back of the truck as the woman emerged from inside. Unfortunately, they couldn’t hear what was being said; using Kurt’s phone to relay audio would have been ideal, but there hadn’t been enough time to set it up and show Harry what to do.

  Harry pointed to the truck. Kurt pulled the Two-Way and Minter’s head away from the edge to make sure that the woman wouldn’t see anything odd. After a few seconds he peeked out to check that she wasn’t returning to her car, which would have been disastrous. What Kurt saw pleased him: Harry and the woman were walking towards the truck.

  “Hide under some of this stuff,” Kurt said to Minter. “She’ll freak out if she sees you before I have a chance to explain.”

  Minter knew this was wise so moved as far away from the door as possible and covered himself with pillows. Very little light reached that far in, anyway.

  Kurt heard footsteps approaching from the side and then Harry’s voice. “No,” Harry said. “It’s pretty light, it just wouldn’t quite fit in the locker. Wait here a sec and I’ll find it.”

  Harry appeared at the door and gave Kurt a thumbs up. He whispered that the woman’s name was Val. Kurt instructed him to come into the back of the truck. Kurt then raised his hood, climbed down, took a deep breath, and walked out into the open.

  “I have something for Ernesto,” he said. “It’s from Stacy.”

  Kurt’s hood was deliberately far enough back to allow Val to see him face-on while protecting him from prying eyes at other angles. She looked into his eyes, speechless.

  “Can you take me to him?”

  Val looked around in wide circles, as though searching for the hidden camera she expected to be recording what had to be a joke. “Take your hood down,” she said.

  Kurt called her towards the truck with his hand. He climbed inside and lowered his hood. “We’re here to help you. To help him.”

  “I thought you were dead,” she said, standing right outside the truck. “The stories said you were kidnapped by “Enemies of Sycamore,” but that’s who Amos blamed for Stacy’s murder, too, so I thought he had taken you out.”

  Kurt held out his left hand and showed Val. “We took our Seeds out. They think we’re dead.”

  She asked the obvious question: “Who’s we?”

  “Before I tell you who he is, you have to know that he wants to bring Sycamore down, too. He tried to help Stacy. He saved my life. He’s not what you think he is.”

  “It’s not Amos,” she said, as though trying to convince herself. “It can’t be Amos.”

  “It’s not.”

  “And it’s not this so-called delivery guy?”

  Kurt shook his head. “This guy is only here because he saw me,” he said, as though Harry couldn’t hear him. “He won’t get in the way.”

  “So who is it? Where is he?”

  “Come out,” Kurt called. Minter revealed himself.

  Val clasped her hands together in front of her face, not because she couldn’t believe her eyes, but because she didn’t want to. “Oh, Kurt,” was all she could say.

  “What kind of internet access are you working with?” Minter asked.

  Val ignored him altogether and focused on Kurt. “Do you know how much Ernesto hates him?”

  “Probably less than I did a few days ago,” Kurt said. “But now we’re on the same side.”

  Val turned to Minter. “And do you know who else is with us? Do you have any idea how hard it will be for Kurt to convince everyone that you’re not a rat?”

  “I let him cut out my Seed with a kitchen knife,” Minter said. “I’m not with Amos anymore. How else can I prove that?”

  Val didn’t answer.

  “Look,” Minter continued, “Ernesto is a weapons-grade asshole, but I can put the past to one side if he can. I built the security that underpins Sycamore and know more than anyone about the systems that keep everything running. Ernesto knows that, too. Just bring me to the mall and let him decide what to do.”

  “How do you know about the mall?” Val asked, visibly concerned.

  “It’s in the letter,” Kurt said. “The letter from Stacy.” He searched through his bags and handed the letter to Val. She read it quickly then put it safely in her pocket.

  Val leaned forward to check Minter’s eyes for Lenses, then did the same with Kurt and Harry. Satisfied, and with no other option, she ordered them out of the truck. “No one else?”r />
  “My wife is in the front,” Harry said. He went to get her.

  “Four…” Val said to herself. She shook her head and went to get her car, knowing that this was safer than having Kurt and Minter walk across the open area.

  Val returned, introduced herself to Joyce, and lifted a small black pouch from her glove compartment.

  “This is nothing personal,” she said, “but I have to bind everyone’s hands during the drive. I have three cords and one pair of real cuffs. Anyone like to volunteer?”

  “But the mall is right there,” Kurt said.

  Val shook her head. “It’s a different mall.”

  Harry spoke next, but not to volunteer to be handcuffed. “I understand your need for security in the car,” he said, “but I’ll be driving the truck and Joyce will be in there with me. One cord for each of the boys and no one needs the cuffs.”

  “No one is going in the truck,” Val said. Her expression suggested surprise that Harry thought this was an option.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My instructions are clear,” she said. “I brought someone back with me once, from here, and Ernesto made it understood that it couldn’t happen again. This time it’s the opposite; there’s no way I can let two of you out of my sight when you already know about the mall.”

  “But we don’t know which mall,” Kurt interjected.

  Val held her ground. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I can’t take the risk. How’s this: I’ll take you all to Ernesto, and as soon as we get there I’ll bring someone else out here to drive the truck back.”

  “Why don’t we all just go in the truck?” Harry countered.

  “Leaving the car is not an option,” Val replied. “Ernesto’s prints are all over it, my prints are all over it, Anth—… well, you get the point.” Val had stopped herself before saying more than she had to, but Kurt assumed that “Anthea” would have been the next name. He wondered who she might be and what role she might play.

  Harry shrugged. “Leaving the truck ain’t an option, either. It’s full of important supplies that won’t fit in you car and there’s no way we can leave them unattended.”