them next? Guys who are way scarier than the ones they work for now.”
Kate took this in and shook her head. She didn’t have an answer but she didn’t like his either. Max shrugged. I drove on as the sun came up over Brooklyn.
When we reached JFK, Tauber almost fell flat on his face getting out of the car. He threw an arm out to keep himself from capsizing completely, staggered upright and nearly swooned a second time.
I grabbed him by the shoulders. He was quivering like someone had put him in a deepfreeze. “Are you okay?”
“Mostly,” he lied, watching his feet like they might start jumping around on their own. “They denied me liquid companionship at L Corp and we haven’t had a lot of…time…since then…”
“Is this a good time to go cold turkey?” Max asked him.
“The question I keep askin’s if I’m more use to ya drunk or sober.” He frowned and rubbed his forehead-his hands were trembling. “Guess we’ll find out pretty quick.”
The garage elevator was right across from the terminal. Max and Kate came to a sudden stop as soon as the doors opened.
“Jesus,” Kate whistled. Nothing seemed wrong that I could see. Then Max whispered, “They’re all over the place.”
“Where?”
“Look for the lapel pins,” Tauber said and everybody turned on him like he’d lit a spotlight. A series of tremors passed through his shoulders-he shrugged, sheepish. “I’m sorry-didn’t think of it before. Special Duty, male or female, all have lapel pins.”
“To make it easy for us to pick them out?” Max asked.
“There’s six pins in a set,” Tauber answered. “each one stands fer a frequency. It’s a security double-check. If ya have L Corp ID but no pin-or ye’re ridin’ the wrong frequency for your pin-they’ve got ya.” He smiled. “Volkov’s paranoid about his shooters goin’ off on their own. Us bein’ able to spot ‘em easy-that’s a bonus.”
“They told you this?” I asked.
“They didn’t tell me shit. But,” he pointed to the black-and-blue bulge, “I know how to keep my eye open-”
“That’s good work,” Max said and Tauber cracked a smile between tremors. “We’ll be as inconspicuous as we can, get our passes, check the luggage and disappear until boarding. Okay?”
We hustled through ticketing and dropping luggage at the bomb-detector. Then we found ourselves on a mezzanine looking down on the food court. It was a sea of lapel pins, men and women in dark-suited clusters killing time, buying magazines and beers and duty-free IPods, arguing sports and reality shows but sticking to their little groups and eyeing their watches.
“They’re not here for us,” Tauber said. “They’re not even watchful.”
“Are they all flying to Rome?” I asked Max.
“Don’t know,” he said. “They’re blocking.”
“Can’t you break it?”
“Of course,” he sniffed like I’d insulted him.
I’m impatient-I know that. Maybe it’s my addled state-if I don’t find something out right away, I forget I wanted to know it. “So probe,” I suggested.
“That’s what I’m not doing. They’re are all on headset. One probe’ll set off alarm bells all over the place.” Max’s look swept from one end of the floor to the other. “Hang out here,” he said. “I’ll do a survey and be right back.”
He went down the steps and through the crowd, staggering slightly like he’d just left Happy Hour. He threaded a route that allowed him to bump into at least one member of each lapel-pin cluster, hitting them from angles that prevented their getting much of a look at him. Then he wandered up the stairs at the far end and returned to us.
“You’re right,” he told Tauber. “They’re not here for us. And you’re right too,” aimed at me, “they’re all going to Rome. There’s thirty of them on several flights-not ours, thankfully-and that’s just New York. The Washington crowd is going through Dulles and more are coming from North Carolina-Miriam Fine’s pupils-and Boston. They got the call two days ago; no plans, no details. Just show up with a suitcase for purposes unknown.” He looked down and shook his head. “The weakest minds in the bunch.”
“They’re plenty effective when they work together,” Tauber shivered. “They made me…feel things…at the headquarters. Like I was going to die, like I was suffocating.” He cleared his throat loudly. “And worse than that. They’re a weapon. If they’re sending that many, there’s a plan.”
“There’s a staircase at the other end of the mezzanine,” Max said, “We go to the bottom and keep our distance until they call our flight.” He turned to Kate. “Don’t focus on anybody as we pass, okay?”
“Meaning what?” She sounded offended. “You don’t want me to probe them?”
“I don’t want you to set them on fire, okay?” He set off smirking-she smacked him on the shoulder as he passed.
The stairwell dropped two stories into a hallway to nowhere. Surely there was a way out from here but it wasn’t apparent. Tauber walked away from us immediately-you could see the tremors taking him. We all watched, concerned, while he fought it off. Max was next to him when he turned to face us again. He handed Tauber some money.
“Here-take this.”
“For what?”
“Maybe it would be smarter if you went home.”
“Which home is that, exactly?” Tauber said. “We kinda put paid to my apartment.”
“I’m just trying to be sensible. It’s your safety.”
“And yours. I get it. I can’t hack it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then don’t. I’m an old gnarly son-of-a-bitch. I’m an alcoholic walkin’ disaster. But I’m one thing none o’ you is.”
“What’s that?”
“A spy. A spy who knows how it’s done. A spy who can get what he needs without gettin’ himself killed.”
“We could all die here,” Max said, pressing the money at him but Tauber pushed it back.
“Nothin’ wrong with dyin’,” he said firmly. “Livin’ without a reason, that’s the bad thing. Put your money away-I’m goin’. You’ll need me yet.”
They exchanged heavy stares for a couple long seconds- Tauber won. Max turned back to us with a kind of fake cheer on his face. “We’ve got a few hours,” he said. “Let’s work on defense.”
“Such as?”
Max held his hands a few inches apart for several seconds, letting them waver in and out a few inches at a time, as though measuring some invisible distance only he could judge.
“Okay,” he said finally, “touch the space between my hands.”
“Touch what?” Kate said.
“Between my hands. Touch it.”
Kate looked like she’d just swallowed a lemon drop and you couldn’t blame her. There was nothing there. But she held her finger out and pushed and the finger buckled.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed, eyes wide. She poked again, having the range now, and her finger stopped at the same spot. That was all it took-her face lit up and she started running her hands over the invisible object, her palms defining the top and sides and pressing a bit at the edges, her eyes bright and smile growing. As she measured, I was able to make out a faint shimmer in the air, a bending of the light filling that space.
“What is it?” she said.
Tauber stuck his hand forward much harder than Kate had and seemed almost to bounce off. “That’s not mindbending,” he gaped.
Max shrugged. “It’s what I did in Novosibirsk when I was supposed to be studying.”
He moved towards her, his hands extended in front of him and the empty space somehow pushed her
