Dannerman opened his eyes at last when the sound of the plane's engines changed. They were switching to hover mode; they had arrived. While the plane was depositing itself on the landing pad by the three-story structure that was the visible part of the Bureau's headquarters Hilda peered outside. Three people were waiting in the cold drizzle. It wasn't until they were out of the aircraft and Sergeant McEvoy and the two headquarters guards were hustling Dannerman away that Hilda realized that the third of the waiting men, his face obscured by the rain hood, was Deputy Director Marcus Pell himself.
Pell didn't offer to shake hands, and Colonel Morrisey didn't bother to salute. 'Good to see you again, sir,' she said, electing to be a little more deferential than usual. 'Now, unless you've got something you need me here for, I guess I'll just catch the return flight.'
He gave her the smile she specially disliked, the one that said he was about to give her an order she didn't want to hear. 'Not today, Hilda. I want you to sit in on the Ananias team briefing before we interrogate your boy again.'
'Sir! I've got this Japanese car-parts thing-'
'Screw the Japanese car parts. Don't look so unhappy; we've got some lunch for you, if you haven't eaten yet? Fine. Let's go.'
There was no use arguing, but she hesitated. 'What about Dannerman?'
'Well, what about Dannerman? He can sweat for a while. Do him good.'
The Operation Ananias team had expanded since the last time Hilda visited Arlington. A dozen people waited in the deputy director's private briefing room, half of them strangers. As promised there was a small salad and a plate of sandwiches at each place on the blond-oak table, and big ceramic coffee jugs scattered handily about. Some people were eating, and that was good enough for her. As soon as she was seated she began to follow their example.
The deputy director, in no hurry to get started, was thoughtfully sipping at a cup of coffee while keying through his notepad. The men and women around the table were murmuring to each other or staring into space-except for the woman across the table, who was signaling for Hilda's attention. It was Pell's vice deputy, Daisy Fennell. She was pretending to scribble with one hand on the palm of the other, looking at Hilda with a questioningly raised eyebrow. Hilda got the message. She shook her head: no, Dannerman hadn't signed. Fennell pantomimed a sigh of resignation and went back to her own notepad.
Hilda chewed methodically (lettuce crisp, good; but whoever had had the idea of putting fruit-flavored dressing on it needed reeducation) as she sorted out the people on the team. The screen ID'd the civilians at the table for her and the Bureau personnel were mostly easy: Daisy Fennel, two of the staff psychologists, the elderly Asian woman who was in charge of electronic operations. That left one she couldn't quite place; a Bureau man, she was sure, but what was his specialty?
She got no help from Marcus Pell, either. As he refilled his coffee cup, he said, 'Might as well get going. All you Bureau people know each other, of course, and I guess the rest of you have introduced yourselves around already. The colonel here is Hilda Morrisey, who has been Agent Dannerman's keeper. Hilda, this is Dr. Xiang-li Hou, from the Naval Observatory-' And went around the table, repeating what the screen had already said. The stout black woman in the paisley dress turned out to be a cerebrospinal surgeon from Walter Reed; the two youngish women with the careworn looks were legislative liaison from, respectively, the Senate and the House, and one of them, surprisingly, had her senator sitting next to her: Alicia Piombero, the black woman from Georgia. (Not the worst of the senators, Hilda knew, but still the enemy: the damn Congress was always trying to mess around in Bureau business.) The aggressively trim-looking man with the obvious hair transplant was a brigadier general from the Pentagon; the one who looked like a prosperous corporation lawyer was. Was some kind of a lawyer, at least, though his specialty wasn't given. He wasn't a bad-looking man, though. He might almost have been a somewhat older edition of Wilbur Carmichael, whom-Hilda glanced at her watch-if this damn meeting ever got itself over with, she might still get a chance to see that evening.
She looked up at Pell as he finished. 'So now we all knew each oilier, and I'd like to thank all of you from outside the Bureau for volunteering your time to-I beg your pardon, Dr. Evergood?'
Morning Report
To all National Bureau of Investigation units
Subject: Current terrorist alerts
Welsh Nationalist Dawid ap Llewellyn, sought in connection with the British Museum firebombing, has been reported in Mexico City, presumed en route to a United States destination. Scotland Yard requests Bureau assistance in apprehending this fugitive.
The Rocky Mountain Militia Command deadline for amnesty for convicted assassins in federal custody expired at midnight. The threatened release of anthrax agents in the Missoula, Montana, water supply has not occurred, but emergency measures are still in force.
All standing alerts remain in effect.
The surgeon had raised her hand. 'I said, 'Who volunteered?' It was put to me as an order.'
'Which makes us even more grateful to you, Dr. Evergood,' the deputy director said, smiling tolerantly. 'What we're here for is a matter that urgently affects the national interest. You probably know some of the background, but I'm going to ask Vice Deputy Fennell to fill in some of the details. Daisy?'
The vice deputy didn't miss a beat. 'You all remember the messages from space that came in two years ago. Many people thought they were a hoax. A few did not. One of those was an astronomer named Dr. Patrice Adcock, head of the Dannerman Observatory in New York City, who believed they came from an abandoned astronomical satellite called Starlab. Dr. Adcock, by the way, is on the premises and you will be seeing her later.'
Hilda suppressed a grin as she translated for herself: what 'on the premises' meant, of course, was 'in one of our confinement cells.' Daisy Fennel was as slick as the deputy director himself; she had come a long way since she was Hilda's own field manager, back when Hilda was a junior agent and the quarry of the moment was the man who had placed a bomb in the Smithsonian. And Daisy hadn't aged very much in the process. She hadn't gained a gram, and, Hilda observed, hadn't touched her sandwiches, either.
'Dr. Adcock,' the V.D. was going on, 'discovered some astronomical evidence that an unidentified object had entered our solar system and conjectured that it had dropped a probe which attached itself to the Starlab satellite.' She glanced at the man from the Naval Observatory. 'Dr. Hou?'
The astronomer stirred himself. 'Yes. At Mr. Pell's request I made a study of that comet-like object. The data are sparse but consistent with what you just described, although I saw no probe being dropped.'
