by Timothy Zahn
"Only one place I can think of that's close enough and has the necessary privacy," Fierenzo said, grimacing. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure it really limits our search that much."
"The transport!" Stephanie exclaimed suddenly, sitting upright in her chair. "It's right offshore somewhere, with easy access to the city."
"And undoubtedly out of range of any passing Greens," Ron added with a growing excitement of his own. "That has to be it."
"That's what I'm thinking," Fierenzo agreed. "The question is how we find it. Ron?"
The growing excitement faded from Ron's face. "I have no idea," he confessed. "I've never been aboard it. I don't think I know anyone who has."
"Garth has," Jonah said sourly. "Some of our fancier electronic stuff is still stored down there. You want me to ask him?"
There was the sound of a clearing throat from over by the door. Roger turned; and to his surprise he saw Velovsky standing there quietly, still in his hat and coat. "I thought you'd left," he said.
Velovsky shook his head, his eyes on Zenas and Laurel. "You don't need to call in any Grays," he said. His voice still sounded uncomfortable, but its earlier antagonism was gone. "I know where it is."
Roger stared at him. "You're kidding."
Velovsky shook his head again. "It was after the Grays had moved in and established themselves," he said, coming somewhat reluctantly back into the main part of the room. "I'd made a record of some of their addresses, and I used to go into Queens a couple times a month and just watch them for awhile. Just to see how they were doing."
He smiled tightly. "I had a terrible urge sometimes to walk up to one of them and tell him that I knew who and what he was, just to see what kind of reaction I'd get. But I knew it would tip them off that the Greens were here, too. Anyway, I would also sometimes follow one of them, just to see where Grays went and what they did.
"One day, I followed one onto the Staten Island Ferry."
Silently, Laurel stood up and held out her hands. A half smile flickered across Velovsky's face as he slipped off his coat and handed it and his hat to her. "My curiosity was aroused," he continued, "so I followed him to a place on the northeast shore that had a bunch of old beach supply sheds scattered around with No Trespassing signs plastered all over them. He went straight to one of them, unlocked the door, and went inside. I waited around, wondering what was going on. When he came out half an hour later, he was carrying a flat box under his arm."
"Do you remember what time of year that was?" Ron asked.
Velovsky squeezed his eyes shut. "I know it was spring," he said slowly. "The weather was nice that day, but it had been raining most of the previous week. Probably late April."
Ron nodded. "Tels and hammerguns for the May 5th coming-of-age ceremony," he said. "All Grays who've passed their tenth birthday are formally inducted into the rights and responsibilities of adulthood at that time."
"You kept your extra hammerguns in the transport?" Zenas asked.
"We kept all our spare electronics down there in those days," Ron said. "We were afraid of having anything potentially incriminating in our apartments or businesses, so things were only brought up from the transport as they were needed."
"We sometimes had people working around the clock in there making new equipment," Stephanie added.
"Not any more, I hope," Fierenzo said.
Ron shook his head. "All our workshops are elsewhere in the city. The transport itself is mostly empty these days."
"Except for one very special resident, we hope." Fierenzo looked at Velovsky. "And you're sure this shed you saw is still there?"
Velovsky nodded. "I've been back a couple of times, just walking around and watching. I never spotted another Gray going in or out, but I doubt they've moved the transport."
"Actually, according to Aleksander, neither side can risk doing that," Roger said. "Too much danger of the Coast Guard spotting it."
"That's it, then," Fierenzo concluded. "Anyone fancy a late-night drive to Staten Island?"
"You mean tonight?" Zenas asked, frowning.
"Why not?" Fierenzo asked. "At this point delays gain us absolutely nothing."
"I'll go with you," Jordan said eagerly, holding up his head.
"Me, too," Jonah seconded.
"Count us in," Zenas confirmed.
"Might as well make it a party," Ron added. "When do we start?"
"Not for another few hours," Fierenzo told him. "We need to let the streets clear out first."
"I don't know," Velovsky said doubtfully. "That beach shed is pretty small. A big crowd of you might wind up just getting in each other's way."
He looked at Zenas and Laurel. "At any rate, I don't think you two in particular should be there."
"But she's our daughter," Laurel said.
"And the transport is the ultimate Gray stronghold," Velovsky pointed out. "News of a Green intrusion there wouldn't sit very well with them."
"He's probably right," Ron said reluctantly. "Torvald doesn't need any more ammunition against us than he's already got."
"By the same token," Velovsky went on, turning to the Grays, "it wouldn't be a good idea for any of you to go, either. Unless you plan to kill whoever's in there, they'll surely be able to identify you afterward. That would hand Torvald the same political capital Detective Fierenzo talked about earlier."
"They're already after Jordan and me," Jonah pointed out.
"But they have no proof you were involved in Melantha's rescue," Velovsky reminded him.
"You'll still need one of us," Ron spoke up. "I don't know how the security's been set up, but it'll be something only Grays can get through."
"That's me, then," Jonah said. "Like I said, I can't get into any hotter water than I'm already in."
"Mr. Velovsky?" Fierenzo prompted.
Velovsky grimaced. "He can get us through their security," he said. "But after that, he stands aside."
Jonah grimaced in turn, but nodded. "All right."
"So who exactly is going?" Roger asked, looking at Fierenzo. "You and me?"
Fierenzo shrugged. "Torvald can't have more than a couple of caretakers on duty at any given time."
"Yeah—Gray caretakers," Roger reminded him. "Big guys with hammerguns and attitude."
"I've got a gun, too," Fierenzo reminded him.
"And what are you going to do with it?" Roger retorted. "Kill them? I thought the whole idea here was to avoid bloodshed."
"I've also got a badge, and the authority to use it," Fierenzo said, starting to sound a little impatient.
"But if you don't want to go, just say so. I can always call in a S.W.A.T. team."
"You know you can't do that," Roger said disgustedly. "Fine. Let's make it a twosome."
"Let's make it a threesome," Velovsky corrected. "I'm going in, too."
"You?" Roger asked disbelievingly.
"What, you think I'm old?" Velovsky demanded, lifting his eyebrows in challenge.
"I appreciate your willingness, Mr. Velovsky," Fierenzo said. "But Roger's right. You just show us to the place, and we'll call it even."
"No," Velovsky said, shaking his head. "I want to see firsthand the condition Melantha's in and how they've been treating her."
"A little political capital for the Green side?" Jonah suggested tartly.
"Let me put it another way," Velovsky said, gazing evenly at him. "Detective Fierenzo seems a little too friendly with you Grays for my taste. Mr. Whittier is an unknown quantity; but he certainly defied the will of the Greens by hiding Melantha from them. I want someone on this expedition who I can trust to genuinely look after Green interests."
"I think you're misjudging us," Fierenzo said calmly. "You're certainly misjudging me. But that's okay. If you want to come along, we'll be glad to have you."
"But you're not going in there unarmed," Stephanie said firmly, standing up. "Are you right-handed, Mr. Velovsky?"
Something flicked across Velovsky's face. "Yes," he said cautiously.
"Good." Pushing up her right sleeve, she did something to her wristband and snapped it open.
"Here," she said, stepping over to him and holding it out. "Take my hammergun."
For a moment the room was silent. Velovsky stared at her, the lines in his face deepening as she continued to hold the wristband toward him. Then, slowly, he pushed back his right sleeve and held out his arm. She adjusted the metal around his forearm and snapped it closed. "It takes a bit of practice to learn how to throw it," she warned. "But Detective Fierenzo said you had a few hours.
We can teach you."
"You gave me your weapon," Velovsky said, his voice sounding odd.
"You may need it," she said simply, sitting down again.
"She's right," Ron added, heaving his bulk to his feet, his wristband already unfastened and in his hand. "Give me your arm, Roger."
Jonah nudged his brother. "Jordan?" he prompted.
"But mine's left-handed," Jordan objected.
"That's okay," Jonah said, looking at Fierenzo. "I'm sure the detective can shoot perfectly well with either hand."
"Not really," Fierenzo said, pushing up his left sleeve. "But as Stephanie said, we've got time to practice."
"And to hear all about your plan?" Roger suggested, wincing a little as Ron wrapped the cold metal around his forearm.
"Yeah, a plan would be nice," Fierenzo agreed. "Let's see if we can come up with one."
39
The sunlight had long since faded from the woods outside Caroline's window, the darkness growing roughly in proportion with the increase in growling from her stomach. If Sylvia was still on her promised eight o'clock dinner schedule, they should be leaving in the next fifteen minutes.
Caroline hoped so. Not that the dinner itself was all that vital, though certainly she felt like she could eat a small cow at this point. But far more important than food was the new note she had carefully wrapped around one of the sticks of gum in her purse.
She lay back on the bed, staring out into the darkness, thinking back over the note. Roger: Green Warriors moving NYC Tue night from N—sweep S w/Damian behind them—must intercept before buildings fall. I love you, C.
Was there anything else she should say? There was a bit of room left at the bottom of the gum wrapper, and she was getting the hang of this Lilliputian writing technique. But anything else would be pure speculation, and she couldn't risk being wrong. Better to just stick with what Sylvia had told her and let Roger draw his own conclusions.
Assuming Roger got the note at all. And that was a big assumption, even with the credit card payment to point him to the right place. Maybe all she was doing was spinning her wheels, idling away her time until Sylvia finally let her go home.
Sylvia.
Caroline rubbed thoughtfully at her cheek. Something had happened after their aborted lunch, something that had set her mental alarm bells clanging. But in all these hours of idleness, she still hadn't figured it out.
Her stomach gave an extra-loud growl, and she winced as a brief ache wound its way through her.
Maybe she would do better to wait until after dinner, and a quieter stomach, to try to figure it out. At least wait until she'd gotten a side salad and maybe some bread tucked away inside her. If the waitress was efficient enough—
And suddenly, there it was. Waitress. On the way back to the Green estate, Sylvia had commented that the waitress would have already cleared away the dishes.
Which was true enough... except that Caroline had never used the word waitress in Sylvia's presence.
She'd always used the term server.
She closed her eyes, fighting upstream against her hunger, forcing her mind to think. So Sylvia knew the word waitress. Was that such a big deal?
Yes, it was. Because Sylvia claimed to have never been to a restaurant before. Sylvia didn't even know how to order a meal at a restaurant.
Yet she knew a female server was also called a waitress.
Caroline felt her throat tighten as the past twenty-four hours suddenly came into a new and devastating focus. Sylvia had been lying right from the very start. She'd lied about her ignorance of human society and customs. She'd lied about wanting to learn more about Caroline's people. She'd probably even lied about not knowing how to play chess.
She'd almost certainly lied about the Greens' upcoming attack on the Grays.
Rolling onto her side, Caroline sat up on the edge of the bed, the sudden movement sending a wave of light-headedness over her. If the battle plan was a lie, then she had to destroy that note immediately. The last thing she could afford was to take the chance that Roger would find it and give it to the Grays.
Or did chance have anything to do with it?
Sylvia the naive, sheltered Green might not know how Caroline could pass a note. She would have no idea that Caroline's credit card could instantly show where they'd been.
But Sylvia the cunning liar would know all those things. Which mean that the only reason they were going out tonight was that Sylvia already knew Caroline's previous note had been found and passed on to the Grays.
This whole thing, in fact, had been a setup, she saw now; a clever and subtle manipulation of Caroline's unwillingness to stand by while innocent people died.
But then, the woman had said it herself, straight to Caroline's face. Deception has always been a part of warfare.
Slowly, she lay back down on the bed. There was no Damian, then. The whole story of a second Groundshaker had been nothing but a red herring, something to deceive and distract the Grays.
So what then was the Green plan? Did they expect Melantha to topple the skyscrapers while the Grays hunted in vain for a phantom Damian? Could a Persuader like Aleksander force her to commit mass murder, the same way Cyril had tried to force her to give herself up outside Lee's market? If they hid Melantha inside that crowd of Warriors she'd seen practicing last night—
She frowned at the ceiling. There had been a crowd out on the lawn, hadn't there? Nikolos had nearly gotten run over twice, in fact, while trying to make his way over to Sylvia. There had been way more than the sixty Warriors Velovsky had said Nikolos could field against the Grays. In fact, if she added in the ones in the trees and those shooting from inside the house, there could have been as many as a hundred fifty of them out there.
And suddenly, an icy chill caught her by the heart as it all fell into place. Thanks to her first note, the Grays would be expecting the Greens to attack with a Groundshaker, which would probably get them spread out and away from the tallest buildings. If they also received the message now waiting in her purse, they would furthermore gather together at the north end of the city, preparing to take on Nikolos, Damian, and sixty Warriors. Instead, they would find themselves facing two or three times that many.
And they would be slaughtered.
Her hands curled into fists. So that was the true secret behind this hidden Green territory. And when she and Roger had threatened to stumble into that secret, Nikolos had calmly taken the opportunity to twist the potential leak to his own advantage.
Caroline had sent Roger on a mission of mercy to the Grays, hoping to save their lives. Instead, she had unwittingly conspired with Nikolos to destroy them.
"No," she muttered aloud. She wouldn't accept that. She couldn't. There had to be something she could do.
She could start by destroying her current note, which would at least keep the Grays from walking into an Upper Manhattan ambush. But it was too late to retract her first note, the one identifying Damian as the chief Green threat. Even if the Grays avoided the trap, they still wouldn't know anything about the true number of enemies they were facing until it was too late.
Somehow, she had to find a way to warn them.
But how? The message Nikolos was obviously expecting her to write was a critical part of the Green plan. Would Sylvia simply take it for granted that Caroline would play her role as expected, or would she have someone check the note before allowing it to be found? Car
oline herself wouldn't take such a risk. She couldn't imagine Sylvia doing so, either.
Unless...
She sat up again and went to the chair where her purse was sitting. So Nikolos wanted to be clever and devious? Fine. She could play that game, too.
Two minutes later, she had finished the addendum to her note and re-wrapped it around the stick of gum. She had tried to think like her husband, to see things in his logical, efficient, problem-solving way, and to leave him a clue that Sylvia wouldn't recognize as such. Whether she had succeeded, only time would tell.
It was entirely possible that she herself would never know one way or the other.
There was a tap on her door. "Yes?" she called.
"It's Nestor," her guard replied through the panel. "Group Commander Sylvia requests your presence at dinner."
Caroline took a deep breath. "All right," she called back. "I'm ready."
Powell gripped the kitchen phone tightly, a sense of exhilaration momentarily eclipsing the fatigue dragging at his mind. "And you're all right?" he asked carefully.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Fierenzo's voice replied, sounding a little bemused by his partner's intensity. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Gee, let me think," Powell growled, a ripple of annoyance joining the emotional mix. This, he decided distantly, must be what it was like to have a teenager. "Maybe because you've been missing for forty-eight hours?"
"Yeah, sorry about that," Fierenzo said, sounding more preoccupied than actually sorry. "You up for a little drive?"
Powell glanced at the kitchen clock. It was just past nine-thirty. "How little?"
"A couple of hours upstate," Fierenzo told him. "Little town called Shandaken."
"Never heard of it."
"You take Exit 19 off the Thruway and drive thirty miles west on Route 28," Fierenzo told him.
"You can't miss it."
"Okay," Powell said, grabbing a pad and scrawling notes. "What's there that we want?"
"There's a little restaurant called the Junction Inn where Caroline Whittier used her Visa about half an hour ago," Fierenzo told him. "I'm hoping she's left us a note on a gum wrapper stuck to the underside of one of the tables."