from old Brubaker's eyes.
'Don't know you well enough. I just know that whenever you've been run through a meat-grinder, it's the machine that got busted.' Now he was laughing again as he watched cigar smoke swirl in the afternoon light. 'That's no small talent, Ted.'
Quantrill, wistfully: 'There must be another slot for me beyond that. Any ideas?'
Old Brubaker rocked on his heels, nodding, taking his sweet time. 'Foreign correspondent,' he finally murmured, 'if you can face a holo camera.'
'Scares me shitless.'
'Security staff? God knows your training has taught you most of the angles.'
'Possible,' Quantrill hedged. 'My trouble is that whether I worked for government or some corporation, they're always screwing somebody and I'd be likely to change sides.'
'True,' said Brubaker. 'Then you'd just have to decide where your ethics pointed you. I can't tell you what your ethic is; I can only tell you that everybody has one, however twisted it might be. You're a long way ahead if you know what's likely to keep you awake nights. And,' he said with a wink, 'I've wasted ten minutes playing guru on the mountaintop to a man who knows what he wants.'
'Do I?'
'Sure: temporary work with Midas Imports, and papers to get you to Corpus Christi. That little container seems to be burning a hole in your pocket. I don't want to know what it is, but I imagine Governor Street will. Am I right?'
Quantrill thought again of the critic, and of
Sanger, and felt his scalp tighten. However much he might long for the satisfactions of a Brubaker, he yearned more for redress. One day he might luxuriate in unhurried disputes of ethics. But for now, his was still an ethic of destruction.
CHAPTER 57
Sandy's journal, 23 Sep.'
Hands so raw can hardly hold pen but canning done! Preserves & veggies, gleaming ranks of riches to spend this winter. With 2 more paying guests could buy choice items in Rocksprings.
Note from Lufo; his friend Quantrel expected from Mexico. Wonder if brute distant kin to Ted Quantrill? Not common name & variations frequent. Ironic that hardened killer should remind me of gentle, generous Ted, object of first girlish crush. Doubtless long dead in some pointless Asian battle. Cannot even recall face after 6 yrs. Is forgetting a natural therapy?
He has returned with, of all things, garish pendant draped over one tusk! Lost or discarded by some tourist with taste for cheap flash, I suppose. Childe insisted hers, & why not? Truly it does charm the eye; poor so long I tend to make poverty a virtue. N.B.: caution Childe against showing it off; why tempt strangers who might think it valuable?
CHAPTER 58
Anything small enough to fit on a railroad flatcar is small enough to disappear when routed through Mexico. That is why Midas Imports always shipped a security kiosk on the same flatcar. Quantrill found those quarters cramped, but the kiosk was insulated and the toughest part of the job was staying awake during the hours he spent in switching yards.
His first transit delay left him in on a siding in downtown Tucson for hours. He could see that the Mexican government did not splurge on civic upkeep; street traffic detoured around potholes in the middle of the city, and the streets were littered with trash. Well, perhaps Mexico did not really expect to keep these yanqui territories very long. His temptation to stroll into the city faded quickly, and Quantrill spent Wednesday reading in his kiosk.
Wednesday was also the day when old Brubaker said a little too much on an unscrambled videophone.
By then, Boren Mills had persuaded President Young that S & R needed help. The NSA people didn't like it, but they did it; a listening NSA spook fingered the Midas Imports man to S & R. A few hours later, kidnapped in his own Chevy by the nearest rover, old Brubaker suspected that he might not get much older.
Old Brubaker was right. Questioned under torture, he cried as anyone would. Graeme Duff of S & R
sensed that his captive might be crying too much and revealing too little so, cursing the time it always took, the rover brought drugs into play. While going under, old Brubaker had time for regrets, chiefly focused on his family. He also regretted that he knew how to contact the Canadians, and that the young escapee had important information for the Indys in Corpus Christi. Brubaker thought it was a memory cube.
Before long, Duff would know whatever old Brubaker thought.
Bull-necked and bull-headed, the rover Duff might have botched the interrogation but for his two-way connection with Control. His critic cautioned him against mentioning names or events until they had been voiced by the victim.
Fifteen minutes after old Brubaker started to babble, Duff asked for Seth Howell online and in another five minutes, got him. 'You'll want to wring this one out yourself,' said Duff, neither happy nor unhappy.
'He's tied up with Canuck spooks, and the last man he fed to the rebels was Ted Quantrill.'
His critic fed him Howell's triumphant, 'Goddamn! I'll be in Eureka in two hours. Keep the informant comfy 'til I get there and meanwhile, find a snuff-box for him. You'll need it when I'm done.'
Duff coded out, grumbling inside. He could always count on Howell giving him the shit-jobs.
On Friday afternoon, Quantrill dozed through the arid stretches of Coahuila while the NSA untangled coded manifests enough to place his flat-car somewhere between El Paso and Matamoros. It would have been possible for S & R to spend a day setting up an airtight trap, monitoring every breath Quantrill took until they nailed him. Except for one thing — actually a bundle of several small things.
First, NSA deputy assistant directors do not appreciate being suddenly subordinated to agencies such as S & R. Next, a position high in spookery does not always eliminate one's political biases. Both the NSA and CIA employed a few patriots who chafed against their orders. Also, the NSA's charter is information-gathering, and some of its team leaders shared the rumor that a certain S & R rover had somehow managed to become a high-pressure leak in an uncontrolled part of the system. Some of these leaders viewed that rumor with what might best be termed guarded optimism.
Finally, it was late on a Friday, and S & R had neglected to formally request prioritizing codes to ensure that information on Quantrill would be run through NSA's crypto office with flags flying. The deputy assistant director spied, among seven other completed routine tasks, the timetables for a flat-car in Alta Mexico. He could pursue this particular item Friday after hours — or he could hurry to his condo and dress for a function he had been told to attend, an open-air reception certain to feature illegal booze, fancy dress, and pliant women. Known in the crypto trade as tux and fux.
The deputy assistant director was not long plagued by indecision. 'Catch you Monday, Quantrill,' he murmured, and headed for his long weekend. Sometimes, he reflected, doing one's part means doing nothing.
On Saturday, Quantrill's flatcar skirted under Wild Country and was bunted onto a barge at Port Isabel.
The flatcar was still unpillaged, but still at the mercy of Mexican shippers. Quantrill's security job would terminate when the dredge equipment reached Corpus Christi Bay but, to judge by the slow passage of the barge up the intracoastal waterway, that equipment might become obsolete during the trip. Tow cables parted; sand bars materialized where none were expected. By late Monday morning Quantrill was almost ready to leap overboard near one of the many islets adjoining the sandy coastline, but now at least the barge was proceeding faster than he could swim.
