on it. Got a solar panel, water from the roof--perfect place to go to ground.'
The car hummed along the interstate. 'And Jackie?'
'She'll come with us. She's cool. And she knows boats and the sea like no one else.'
Ford moved over and took an exit. 'So how do we get to this fishing shack?'
'Borrow my father's boat and go at night.'
'That just might work,' said Ford. 'You understand, Abbey, I'm going to leave you there for a while until I straighten this mess out. I can't stay. You'll have to fend for yourselves.'
'I'm all for hiding. Getting shot at really sucks.'
'Good. Then we're going to Maine.'
'I didn't have a chance to tell you,' Abbey said, taking a deep breath. 'I made a pretty wild discovery on that NPF drive.'
Ford looked astonished. 'How did you break into it?'
'I guessed the password. You aren't going to believe this--there are pictures on that drive of something on Deimos. Something unnatural. And very old. Corso labeled it the DEIMOS MACHINE.'
Ford stared at her. 'Come now.'
' 'Come now' yourself. There are a whole suite of images of it. At the bottom of a crater called Voltaire, hidden in the shadows, barely visible. A machine of some kind. No shit.'
'It could be a natural geological feature. Or a scientific prank.'
'No way.'
Ford gazed at her, his pale blue eyes probing. 'What does it look like?'
'A round, rimlike thing, like a cylinder, or maybe the opening to a tunnel. With some spheres attached to it. Half-buried in dust.'
Ford stared at her. 'Wait. Are you saying this is something
'That's exactly what I'm saying.'
59
Harry Burr cruised into the mall, swinging his arms, strolling along with his face arranged into a suitable slack-jawed shopper expression. He checked a color-coded mall map and saw where he needed to go. It was a downscale mall, shabby, 20 percent of the storefronts vacant. The AC was cranked up. They needed the Siberian temperatures, Burr figured, to keep the natives cool. Wouldn't want all these fat ones to stroke out before they'd unloaded their dollars.
He finally found what he was looking for in a sign that said mall security. The door was shut. Burr knocked, waited, then tried the knob. Locked. He looked around: not a security man in sight.
At this, irritation rose up like a hiccup of bile in the back of his throat. This was turning into a real balls-up. Surely he wasn't losing his touch. His research revealed that Ford was ex-CIA and somehow the fucker had sniffed him out back at the bar, when that damn Jap-in-the-box bartender popped up with a cannon. Lucky for him the man couldn't shoot worth a shit, probably never fired a .45 before in his life. Somehow Ford had also eluded him at the motel. Burr sure was earning his money on this one.
Burr tried to push down his anger. He prided himself on being a cheerful fellow by nature, not given to brooding or vengeful feelings. That was another of his strengths. He didn't allow himself to get emotionally involved in what was essentially the straightforward business of killing for money. Or so he told himself. He couldn't let this one become personal.
He looked around at the mall, rapidly filling with morning shoppers. Good luck finding the door shakers in this place. Instead of wasting fruitless hours searching the entire mall for security, better to have security come to him. The mountain to Mohammed, so to speak. Spying a CD World he strolled in, picked out a mark in the heavy metal section, and began browsing nearby. The mark was perfect: a pimply faced goth with purple hair, smelling like hemp, carrying a shopping bag. Burr edged toward him, plucked up a CD by a group called Spineshank, turned and walked past the goth, bumping him gently as he went by.
'Excuse me.'
The goth grunted something unintelligible and went back to flipping through the CDs. Moving toward the cash registers, Burr waited for the goth to finish browsing and then followed him toward the exit. As soon as the goth hit the security gates the alarms began to whoop, and the freak stood there like a deer caught in the headlights, his kohl-rimmed eyes wide with a
And here came the mountain to Mohammad, two mountains in fact, huffing and jingling. They surrounded the goth and searched his bag, finding the Spineshank CD. Overriding his ineffectual and utterly unbelievable protests that the CD must've fallen in the bag by accident, they began to hammer him with questions like the tough guys they were, giving him the third degree.
Harry Burr walked over, flashed a shield he carried--formerly in the possession of a D.C. state police officer who had allowed himself to be pickpocketed during a traffic stop. 'Officer Wilson?' he asked the door shaker in charge, reading his name off the badge.
'Yes?'
Burr folded away the shield. 'They told me you were the man to ask for.'
'They did?'
'It's about the car theft this morning. I'm the D.C.-Virginia liaison officer, Undercover Investigations Division, Motor Vehicles. Name's Lieutenant Moore.' Offered his hand. Wilson took it.
'Talk in private, Officer?'
'Certainly.' Burr moved Wilson away from the increasingly shrill protests of the kid, who was now being cuffed. Burr pulled out a little notebook, licked his finger, turned the pages. 'I won't take up but a minute--just need to get a few details.'
'The file's back in the office. We forwarded the information to the state police already.'
Burr rolled his eyes in disgust at the bureaucracy. 'We're a bit top-heavy these days. Could take a week for the file to rise to the surface--or you could help me out right now.' A wink. 'What say?'
'Sure thing, Lieutenant. Glad to help.'
The office was just what Burr expected, a windowless cell smelling of Mennen. Wilson, the glorified door shaker, sat behind the desk, pulled open a drawer, and took out a file.
'I need the usual,' said Burr, 'car, license plate, witnesses . . . whatever you got.'
'No witnesses, Lieutenant,' said Wilson, his face firmly set as befitted the seriousness of the crime. 'It was a white Ford F150 king cab pickup, 1985 model, Virginia license . . .' He reeled off the details in full-throated cop- speak, while Burr jotted it down.
'We'll recover the vehicle; we always do,' said Wilson. 'Some kids on a joyride. No chop shop would be interested in an old-model pickup like that.'
'I have no doubt you will attain a successful conclusion, Officer,' said Burr, rapping his gold pencil on the notebook and tucking it away. He held out his hand. 'Don't bother contacting me, I'll keep in touch with you myself, by phone. When that pickup resurfaces, I'd sure like to know. Got a card?'
Wilson passed him his card.
'Much obliged, Officer.' He hesitated. 'Might be best--for diplomacy's sake, you understand--not to mention my visit to the D.C. or Virginia state police HQs. They don't like it when someone from UID makes an end run around their wall of bureaucracy.' Again he flashed Wilson a knowing wink.
'Sure thing,' said Wilson, with a grin.
Burr left the mall and got back into his Beetle. God, it was hot, especially after the frigid air in the mall. Ford and the girl had almost certainly gone to ground. Now he could do nothing except cool his ass waiting for the stolen vehicle to turn up. Slapping the steering wheel in frustration, Harry Burr muttered a low curse. This was one
