Hot Sky at Midnight

When Van Vliet was gone, Rhodes had one more drink, just a small one, to ease him through the transition into the day’s next problem.

Which was to ponder the Nakamura call again. Rhodes was still certain that Mr. Nakamura, whoever he might be, had called the wrong number. But how odd that Nakamura would have thrown in that business about there being no mistake, exactly as though he was anticipating Rhodes’ puzzled response. Something in that nagged at him, demanding resolution.

About that house in Walnut Creek that you are interested in buying.

The thought flashed through Rhodes’ mind that that might be some sort of code phrase—that it referred to some secret enterprise into which Nakamura meant to inveigle him, the sale of corporate secrets, or an intricate counterespionage ploy, something like that. Things like that went on in the megacorp world all the time, Rhodes knew. Though he had never had any firsthand experience of them.

Rhodes put through a call to Ned Svoboda in Imaging and Schematics.

Svoboda was an occasional after-hours drinking companion of his, who had the rare distinction of having worked for three different megacorps in a dozen years or so: not only Samurai Industries but also Kyocera-Merck and before that the somewhat less formidable IBM/Toshiba bunch. Svoboda was shrewd, Svoboda was about as trustworthy as anyone Rhodes could think of, and Svoboda had been around the block a couple of times. If anybody knew about corporate codes, industrial espionage, whatever, Svoboda was the one.

“You mind if I cruise over and talk to you for a couple of minutes?” Rhodes asked. “Something odd has come up and I need a little advice.” And, Rhodes did not explicitly need to add, it was something best not discussed over the Company communications net. The wires had ears. That was common knowledge.

Svoboda didn’t mind. Rhodes descended eight floors to Imaging and met Svoboda on the bubble-enclosed leisure terrace outside his office. He was a short, heavyset man of about forty, with dark rumpled hair and emphatic Slavic features.

Rhodes said, “I had a peculiar phone call this morning. Fellow with a Japanese name out of Walnut Creek —a realtor, he says. Says he’d like to talk to me about the house I’m interested in buying out there.”

“I didn’t know you were planning to move over the hill.”

“I’m not. I don’t know this Jap from Adam.”

“Ah so.”

“But he realizes that. When he phoned, he went out of his way to tell my annunciator that regardless of what I might think, this wasn’t a mistaken call, that I was the Rhodes he was trying to reach and that I would really be interested in the property he had to offer. So I began to wonder, Ned—”

Svoboda’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I bet you did.”

“And I thought maybe it’s more complicated than it appears at first glance—something that you might be able to explain to me, some kind of cryptic message that I ought to understand but don’t quite see the—”

“Shhh!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just don’t say anything more, okay?” Svoboda held his left arm out and let his right hand go crawling quickly across the back of it in the funny little crab-walk gesture that universally meant, There probably are bugs here. The Company had its spy eyes everywhere—even on leisure terraces, it seemed. Svoboda said, “You have a pen and a piece of paper on you?”

“Sure. Here.”

It was a very small piece, but it was all that Rhodes could find. Svoboda clamped his lips together and wrote with exaggerated care, running his words across and down the side of the page in his effort to get down everything he wanted to say. He kept it covered with his other hand as he wrote, to prevent any hidden camera from seeing. When he was done he folded the piece in half, and in half again, and pressed it into the palm of Rhodes’ hand.

“Go for a little walk and read it,” Svoboda said. “Then maybe call me at home tonight if you want to talk about it any more, okay?”

He grinned and touched two fingers to the side of his head in a quick salute, and went back inside.

Rhodes, frowning, returned to his own area of the building. He thought of going into the washroom to read Svoboda’s note, but on reflection he considered that there was no place in the building more likely to have a secret scanner eye mounted in the wall than in a washroom. Instead he simply leaned against the wall outside his office and opened the folded scrap, cupping it in his hand, and held it up in front of his face, very close, as if trying to read his own palm.

It said, in heavy block letters:

THIS IS A JOB OFFER. TELLING YOU THEY WANT TO SELL YOU A HOUSE MEANS THAT THEY WANT TO HIRE YOU.

Instantly Rhodes felt adrenaline beginning to surge. His heart was thumping with frightening force. What the hell was this?

THIS IS A JOB OFFER.

From whom? Why?

He read the note again, read it two or three times, and then balled it up and stuffed it deep into his pocket.

THEY WANT TO HIRE YOU.

They? Who were they?

TO HIRE YOU. THEY WANT.

There had been a pretty good earthquake in the Bay Area three years ago, six-point-something on the Richter scale. The whole building had swayed for two and a half minutes then. This felt like that.

Rhodes was trembling. He tried to control it, and failed.

THIS IS A JOB OFFER.

Forget it, he told himself.

You don’t want to mess around with anything like this. You already have a job. It’s a good one. You have a fine department, plenty of good people working for you, nice pay, steady upward slope. You have never worked for anybody but Samurai Industries in your life. You have never wanted to work for anybody but Samurai Industries.

He reached into his pocket and touched the crumpled bit of paper.

Throw it away, Nick. Throw it away.

Rhodes went back into his office. More things were blinking on all the inputs, but he ignored them. He poured himself a drink, a pretty significant one.