by Hines
When he’s ready.
“I’m glad to hear it, because . . . well, I’m not sure the wasp pheromone experiments you’ve been participating in have been entirely successful.Surely you must feel this.”
“Yes.”
“Not that we feel the pheromone road is a dead end at all; we think thereare others who might do . . . more with the resources. Maybe you.”
“Yes.”
The secret visitor smiles. “So eager to participate, to do what is asked. In that respect, at least, the wasp pheromones haven’t been a total wash.” The secret visitor takes a deep breath, holds the teenaged boy’s gaze steadily. “You realize what the next steps are. More than that, what the eventual steps are.”
“Yes.”
“There will be more . . . medicines. To help you learn. To help you digest what Raven and his crew have been doing. To help you create new ideas—ideas Raven will, ultimately, be unable to explore. You’ll have intense daily sessions, absorbing all there is to know. Perhaps a brilliant mind such as yours will help us win the Cold War, defeat the Soviets.”
“How can war be cold?” the teenaged boy asks.
The secret visitor pauses, brushes a hand against the boy’s cheek, and smiles. It’s that radiant smile the teenaged boy loves to see, and in that moment, the boy knows he would do anything—anything—to keep the visitor smiling.
He would kill, if he had to.
THIRTEEN
IN THE MORNING, LUCAS HAD AN URGE TO GRAB A COFFEE AND A DONUT at Dandy Don’s, but figured he’d wait until he got to The LiveWire Internet café; there, he ordered a coffee and a scone before sitting down at the ancient PC and punching in the numeric IP address to track Saul’s geopatch. It showed the patch had been at the same location since 10:07 the previous evening, about twenty miles away in Bowie, Maryland.
Good to know; most likely Saul’s home. He’d visit it soon. That would mean a ride to the end of the Green Line, and then a bus from there, but it would be doable.
Lucas backed up through the history logs to see where else Saul had been since their meeting the previous day. Other than the stops Lucas had already investigated, it didn’t look like he’d been anywhere interesting—he’d stayed in his office until eight thirty the previous evening, actually.
“All work and no play,” muttered Lucas as he sipped at his coffee. The scone was too dry for his taste, but he wasn’t about to complain. It filled his stomach.
Next he pulled up the Creep Club home page and typed in Donavan’s username and password. It still worked, so that was good. There were several new posts, including one posted within the last half hour from “Hiss”—had to be the guy who called himself Snake—promising a new meeting announcement within the next twenty-four hours.
So far, so good. If Donavan had tried to log in with his old information, Lucas was sure he would have contacted the admin for a reset. That hadn’t happened.
The question was: what was Donavan up to?
Maybe Lucas should drop by Donavan’s for another look later on. Right now, though, he had a few other stops to make.
LUCAS TOOK HIS TIME WALKING AROUND THE PERIMETER OF SAUL’S OFFICE building; eventually he found a nice hiding spot in the hedge and planting area that separated the building from a string of row houses right next to it. There, he took out his spotting glass and scanned the windows on the nearest floors.
No immediately obvious activity; it was a Saturday, so he hadn’t expected much to be happening. Part of the reason he was there now.
He’d already checked the front entry and other doors on the main floor. The front doors had a security station and a metal detector, or at least a setup that looked like a metal detector, while the other doors all required a swipe of an ID card.
He scanned the perimeter of the building and found two cameras pointed at the sidewalks. Also expected. He was sure, with a bit of looking, he would find surveillance cameras on the other sides of the building.
The building was only four stories tall. Part of the reason, certainly, had something to do with the District’s height requirements—no buildings higher than 288 feet—but just as much, he knew a building like this wouldn’t want to draw any attention to itself.
At The LiveWire he’d searched for information, but no publicly available records existed. He’d even logged on to Google Earth to check the location, but the satellite photos of the area that should have appeared told him “no image available.” It was a building that didn’t officially exist.
He could try to break in today, but it would take a few hours to put together a workable plan. He needed an entrance plan, an exit plan, a bit of time to construct an observation deck in the right spot—and he didn’t even know exactly where Saul’s office was hidden inside the building. On top of that, he only had a rudimentary understanding of the building’s security system at this point. Best to wait for now; he didn’t really need to get inside yet.
He closed his spotting scope and returned everything to his backpack. Saul’s office would have to wait; right now, it was time to visit the man at home.
SAUL’S HOME, AND HOMETOWN, WERE A BIT OF A SURPRISE: AN OLDER, country-style cottage in the villagelike atmosphere of Bowie. Lucas had half expected a large condo filled with chrome appliances after meeting Saul. But this home looked like something straight out of the pages of Mother Goose.
He wasn’t sure if Saul was in right now—most likely, he was—but Lucas wasn’t terribly worried about being spotted. Most people paid no attention to what was happening around them, too wrapped up in their own thoughts. What was it the musician had said at the Metro stop? They hear, but they don’t feel. Even though Saul was a government spook, it was doubtful he would be any different. Saul wouldn’t see him in his neighborhood simply because he wouldn’t expect to. So much of the typical person’s perception of the world centered on what he expected to see. Lucas had used those expectations, those perceptions, to his benefit many times before.
Still, he was careful as he strolled around the perimeter of the house. He stayed on the opposite side of the street. He wore a hat and sunglasses. He carried a large, handled department store bag (into which he’d put his backpack), playing the part of an unassuming man who had just made a big purchase and was now walking home down the pleasant streets of Bowie, Maryland.
Saul’s home was a pale yellow, with white trim and accents outlining both the house and the attached one-car garage. A stone walkway in front of the house meandered across a small, well-kept lawn.
An alley had once run down the back of the property, he was sure, but a new development was butted up against the rear of Saul’s neighborhood now, half-finished homes and cement pads adorned by Realtors’ signs. So much for Saul’s village setting. Right behind him, the Whispering Pines subdivision was rising, offering “Relaxing Old-World Living.”
Bad for Saul and his neighbors, perhaps, but good for him. Lucas walked quickly into the subdivision and found a half-finished home just north of Saul’s cottage. The exterior walls were in place, protected by wrap and tar paper while waiting for the permanent siding, but there weren’t any interior stud walls yet. Holes had been framed in the exterior walls for windows, but they were just that right now: holes.
Lucas climbed some makeshift wooden steps to the unfinished home’s second story and set down his shopping bag. He retrieved his backpack, unzipped it, and found his spotting scope.
The back of Saul’s home had a small patio with a couple of chairs and a small table. A metal fence across the back property line was almost entirely covered by a lush, green hanging vine.
Behind the patio, he studied a door that led to the garage for a few moments before sliding the scope’s lens over the roofline of the house. At the end of the garage, a fan spun slowly, providing exhaust from the ceiling rafters.
Lucas slipped the scope into his pack again, listened to the birds chirping. He took a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of fresh-cut grass. A plan had formed in his mind
, and it was time to put it into action.
Shouldering his pack, he quickly moved out of the half-finished house he was occupying and went across the tracks rutted in the mud to Saul’s vine-covered fence. Without hesitating, he vaulted the low fence and went to the patio. The door from the patio to the garage was unlocked, just as it had been at Viktor Abkin’s house. Inside the garage, he carefully closed the door behind him as he scanned. A car was there, which most likely meant Saul was home. The interior of the garage was dark, but light spilled onto the roof of the blue sedan from a window on the garage’s exterior wall—just enough light for Lucas to make out the general interior.
Several tools hung on the wall. Overhead, a few extension cords snaked across the ceiling. One connected to the exhaust fan high under the roof apex, he guessed. The other went to a small refrigerator over in the corner, right next to the door that led into the house.
He wasn’t interested in that door right now. Instead, he continued to study the ceiling of the garage, scanning the bare gypsum board. Then he found what he was looking for: a small trapdoor providing access to the garage’s ceiling rafters, just above Saul’s vehicle.
Quietly he moved to the car, then stepped up onto the front bumper and crept along the front fender. He was careful to stay on the edge of the fender’s seam, where the metal was strongest—further in on the fender, or on the hood, he knew, the metal would bend or buckle as he stood on it.
He pushed at the small piece of gypsum board, sliding it to the side and setting it on the adjacent rafters. Warm air bled from the space above the ceiling, in spite of the exhaust fan.
Effortlessly, Lucas put his hands on either side of the space, grabbed the tops of the two-by-six framing with his fingers, and boosted himself up through the hole like a gymnast. His head and chest inside the hole now, he moved his hands to adjacent rafters to get a better purchase, then scrambled onto the ceiling. He pushed the chunk of cut board back into place and crouched on top of the rafters for a few minutes, catching his breath and listening for movement below.
None came.
It was even darker up here—just some angled slats of light from the grille of the exhaust fan at the end of the garage—so he slipped off his backpack and found his flashlight, then flicked it on and let the beam explore the space where he now stood.
The garage ceiling wasn’t insulated—only the framing covered by the gypsum boards. In spite of this, he saw mice droppings dotting the rafters and heard a mouse scurrying several feet away. Saul had a bit of a rodent problem.
The thought made Lucas smile, for some reason.
Over in the corner, he noticed that the exhaust fan was spinning slowly from a slight breeze; it wasn’t even turned on, which was why the top of the garage was holding in so much heat. It felt like a steam tunnel in here, which was oddly comforting to him. He’d always liked steam tunnels.
To his right, the garage was attached to the house. It had obviously been built sometime after the house, as he could see some of the home’s exterior trim above the ceiling line. But, just as he’d hoped, the rafters and joists of the garage were attached to the framework of the house. From here, above the ceiling, he could simply walk across the garage and into Saul’s home.
He went onto the joists of the home, being careful to step only on the two-by-six framing; if he made a mistake and stepped down into the spaces between the boards, he’d probably fall through the ceiling of Saul’s home—a major surprise for both of them.
Above the home, the ceiling was padded with spun fiberglass insulation, which made it easier for him to find what he was looking for: another trapdoor leading to the home’s interior.
He was making his way to the trapdoor when he felt and heard a door open and then shut somewhere below; the compression caused by the door’s movement created a suction effect up in the rafters, moving air past his face.
He paused, listening. Another door opening, this one a car. Finally, a loud rumble started, and he immediately recognized it as the electric garage door.
He smiled. Good timing on Saul’s part. Or bad timing, depending on your view.
The car started and backed out, then the garage door rumbled back into place again. Lucas remained still, listening, waiting. He had no way of knowing if other people were inside the home. Saul didn’t exactly seem like the wife-and-2.3-kids type, but then, he didn’t seem like the historic-cottage type either.
He could probably go back through the garage ceiling now, enter the home through the door between the garage and the main house. But it still felt better to be up here; he’d check to make sure no one else was in the home before dropping through the ceiling.
Satisfied it was safe to proceed, Lucas went to the small square of gypsum board that accessed the home underneath. He felt the edge of the board with his fingers, lifting it out of its place and putting it to the side. Below was a hallway with honey-colored wood floors.
Lucas stuck his head through the opening, surveying the hall, listening for other sounds. Nothing, save for the heavy tick of an oldfashioned pendulum clock somewhere out of sight. He couldn’t see it, but he recognized the sound immediately; an image of a tall clock with glass doors, weights you pulled down each day to keep the clock running—
Where had that come from? Had he ever actually seen such a clock? Not that he could remember. So why was he getting that mental picture?
No matter. Satisfied that the interior of the house was empty, he pulled out his nylon rope and knotted one end of it over a ceiling joist. He wrapped the rope around his forearm, then dropped down through the hole and into the home.
The home smelled warm, inviting. Saul had obviously cooked himself some breakfast recently, and the smell of it still clung in the air. Sausage or bacon, maybe.
Lucas went down the hallway, looking at some photos that had been mounted on the wall—old black-and-white photos, including one of a balding man, grin stretching across his whole face, with an arm draped around the shoulders of a woman who wore her hair pulled back into a severe bun. The woman was smiling as well, but seemed somehow embarrassed, as if someone had just told an inappropriate joke, and she was staring down at the ground in front of her.
A happy moment, a totem that drew him immediately. Yes, this would make a nice totem.
The end of the hall opened into a sitting room, and the oldfashioned clock he had heard was against the wall in the corner. Its face was engraved with scrollwork and Roman numerals, and the clock’s cabinet was made of dark stained wood, buffed to a sheen in places by its many years of service.
It wasn’t exactly the clock he’d pictured, but it was close—close enough to make him stand there, staring at the brass pendulum swinging back and forth for a few moments, comforted by its reassuring arc.
Yes, this clock—well, not this clock, but one very much like it—brought back . . . something. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it bobbed at the surface of his consciousness, begging to be remembered.
Tearing himself away from the clock in the sitting room, Lucas made his way to the kitchen and looked around. An old teapot, bright red, sat on the stove. Knickknacks and antiques adorned the shelves on the walls. Nothing interesting there.
He had turned to go back to the sitting room when he heard something that stopped him dead: a key going into the front door, just ten feet away from him past a small coat closet. There was a curtain across the glass pane on the front door, but Lucas could see a man’s head outlined behind the curtain, struggling with the key.
He’d have no time to get back to his nylon rope and his escape route through the ceiling. Time to improvise. As he heard the bolt turning inside the lock, he stepped toward the door and into the space behind it; a fraction of a second later, the door opened and swung inward and toward him, creating a small pocket where he now hid. The figure made no effort to close the door behind him, instead hurrying toward the interior of the home. Footsteps made their way across the hardwood floors, and Lucas immediately r
ecognized the gait of Saul himself. He could tell the man was muttering, saying something to himself as he moved through the home.
Saul disappeared for a few moments, then reappeared. He had his head down and was going back toward the front door when he stopped. He changed directions, and Lucas peeked, watching as Saul went to the ancient pendulum clock on the wall; he opened the glass doors on the front and pulled the weights on the chains, which would allow the pendulum to keep moving and the clock to keep running. Saul took a last look at the clock, nodded, and turned toward the door again.
Lucas pressed himself against the wall, feeling the door get pulled away as it closed. Saul twisted the key to relock the door and moved away from the house. Moving his head and peeking out of the curtain on the door, Lucas saw the man go back to his blue sedan, which sat haphazardly in the driveway with the driver’s door still hanging open. Once inside, he backed the car out of the driveway and then pointed it west, chirping the tires a bit as he wheeled onto the street.
Lucas relaxed, realizing he’d been holding his breath for the last several seconds. Close call.
Okay, so Saul had obviously forgotten something at the house and came back to retrieve it before going to . . . wherever he was going. In the process, Lucas had nearly been caught.
This was one reason why he didn’t ever creep into people’s homes: too many variables. You never knew when someone was going to change plans or show up unannounced.
And yet, the thrill of it was coursing through his veins now. He had to admit, this was much more interesting than scanning the desks of secretarial pools. Much more dangerous.
After a few moments, Lucas tried to retrace Saul’s steps. He hadn’t seen where the man went, so he had no way of knowing for sure. However, Saul hadn’t seen the nylon rope or open hole in the ceiling of the hallway, so he was pretty sure the man hadn’t gone down his hallway. Good thing. Really, that only left the sitting area.
He’d been able to see Saul at the pendulum clock, but not in the rest of the sitting area. What had he returned to retrieve? Could be something as simple as a wallet, he supposed.