minor tasks was galling, and sitting at home on full pay, knowing that serious, diligent people like Agent Herz were out there busting their guts to get the job done made it even worse. But there was just about nothing he could do that would contribute to the mission, beyond what he was already doing: sitting at ground zero of a stakeout.
Mike had never been a loafer, and while he was used to taking vacations, enforced home rest was an unaccustomed and unwelcome imposition. For a while he thought about getting out and picking up some groceries, but the prospect of getting into the wagon and driving with his left leg embedded in a mass of blue fiberglass was just too daunting.
Just after lunchtime (a cardboard-tasting microwave lasagna that had spent too long at the bottom of the chest freezer), the front doorbell rang. Cursing, Mike stumbled into the hall, pushing off the walls in a hurry, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t get impatient and leave before he made it. He paused just inside the vestibule and checked the spy hole, then opened the door. “Come in!” He tried to take a step back and ended up leaning against the wall.
“No need to put on a song and dance, Mike, I know you feel like shit.” Smith nodded stiffly. “Go on, take your time. I’ll shut the door. We need to talk about stuff.” He was carrying a pair of brown paper grocery bags.
“Uh, okay.” Mike pushed himself off from the wall and half-hopped back towards the living room. The crutch would have come in handy, but he knew his way around well enough to use the furniture and door frames for support. “What brings you here?” He called over his shoulder. “I thought I was meant to be taking it easy.”
“You…are.” Smith glanced around as he came into the main room.
“You were still kind of crinkle-cut, son. And there were medics about.”
“Gotcha.” Mike waved at the door to the kitchen. “I’d offer you a coffee or something but I’m having a hard time getting about…”
“That’s alright.” Smith put one of the grocery bags down on the side table, then walked over to the kitchen door and put the other on the worktop inside. Then he made a circuit of the living room. He held his hands tightly behind his back, as if forcibly restraining himself from checking for dust on top of the picture rail. “I won’t be long.”
“Are we being monitored?”
Smith glanced at him. “I sure hope so.” He gestured at the walls. “Not on audio, but there’s a real expensive infrared camera out there, son, and a couple of guys in a van just to keep an eye on you.”
“There are?” Mike knew better than to get angry. “What are they expecting to see?”
“Visitors who don’t arrive through the front door.” Smith slung one leg over the arm of the recliner and leaned on it, inspecting Mike pensively.
“Oh, right.” For a second, Mike felt the urge to kick his earlier self for passing on absolutely everything he’d learned. The impulse passed: he’d been fever-ridden, and anyway it was what he was supposed to do. But still, if he hadn’t done so, he wouldn’t be stuck out here under virtual house arrest. He might be back in hospital, with no worries about groceries. And besides, Smith had a point. “You might want to warn them I’m expecting a housekeeper to show tomorrow—she drops by a couple of times a week.”
“I’ll tell them.” Smith paused. “As it happens, I know you’re not being listened in on, unless you lift the receiver on that phone—I signed the wiretap request myself. There’s stuff we need to talk about, and this place is more private than my office, if you follow my drift.”
“I’m not being listened in on right now? Suits me.” Mike leaned back in the sofa. “Talk away. Sorry if I don’t, uh, if I’m not too focused: I feel like shit.”
“Yes, well.” Smith glanced at him. “That’s why you’re on sick leave. You may be interested to know that your story checks out: that is, Beckstein’s mother disappeared six months ago. Her house is still there, the bills are being paid on time, but there’s nobody home. We haven’t gotten a trace on her income stream so far; her credit cards and bank account are ordinary enough, but the deposits are coming in from an offshore bank account in Liechtenstein and that’s turning out to be hard to trace. Anyway, I think we can confirm that she’s one of them.” He stood up again and paced over to the kitchen door then back, as if his legs were incapable of standing still. “This is a, a tactical mess. We’d hoped to get at least a few successful contacts in place before our ability to operate in fairyland was blown. What this means is that they, uh, Beckstein senior’s faction, are going to be alert for informants from now on. On the other hand, if they’re willing to talk we’ve got an—admittedly biased—HUMINT source to develop. Contacts, in other words.”
Mike stared at him. Smith was just about sweating bullets. “Who do we talk to in the Middle East?” he asked. “I mean, when we want to know what al-Qaeda is planning?”
“That’s a lot more accessible. This, these guys, it’s like China in the fifties or sixties.” Smith looked as if he was sucking on a lemon. “Look.” He picked up the second grocery bag and handed it to Mike. “This stuff is strictly off the books because, unfortunately, we’re off the map here, right outside the reservation.”
“What—” Mike upended the bag and boxes fell out. A mobile phone, ammunition, a pistol. “The fuck?”
“Glock 18, like their own people use. The phone was bought anonymously for cash. Listen.” Smith hunkered down in front of him, still radiating extreme discomfort. “The phone’s preprogrammed with Dr. James’s private number. This is running right from the top. If you have to negotiate with them, James can escalate you all the way to Daddy Warbucks.”
Mike was impressed, despite himself.
“In case the other faction come calling for you.”
Smith took a deep breath. “Find out if GREENSLEEVES was blowing smoke. If all he had was a couple of slugs of hot metal, that’s still bad—but right now it would be really good if we could call off the NIRT investigation. On the other hand, you might want to point out to the Beckstein faction what would happen if one of our cities goes up.”
“Huh. What would happen? What could we do, realistically?” Mike stared at him.
Smith paused for a few seconds. “I’m just guessing here, you understand. I’m not privy to that information. But my guess is that we would be very, very angry—for all of about thirty minutes.” He swallowed. “And then we’d retaliate in kind, Mike. The SSADM backpack nukes have been out of inventory since the early seventies and the W54 cores were retired by eighty-nine, but they don’t have to stay that way. The schematics are still on file and if I were a betting man I’d place a C-note on Pantex being able to run one up in a few weeks, if they haven’t done so already. Daddy Warbucks and the Wolfman are both gung-ho about developing a new generation of nukes. It could get really ugly really fast, Mike. A smuggler’s war, tit for tat. But we’d win, because they’ve got better logistics but we’ve got a choke hold on the weapons supply. And if it comes to it, I don’t think we’d hold back from making it a war of extermination. It’s not hard to stick a cobalt jacket on a bomb when there’s zero risk of the fallout coming home.”
“Wow, that’s ugly all right.” 9/11 had been bad enough: the nightmare Smith was dangling before him was infinitely worse. “Anything else?”
“Yep.” The colonel stood up. “From now on, until you’re through with this thing or we call it off, you’re in a box. We don’t want you in day-to-day contact with the organization. The less you know, the less you can give away.”
“But I—oh. You’re thinking, if they kidnap me—”
“Yes, that’s what we’re afraid of.”
“Right.” Mike swallowed. “So. I’m to tell Mrs. Beckstein about Matt’s bomb threat, and we either want it handed over right now, or convincing evidence that he was bluffing. Otherwise, they’re looking at retaliation in kind. What else?”
“You give her the mobile phone and tell her who it connects to. There’s a deal on the table that she might find interesting.” Smith nodded to himself. “And there’s one other thing you can pass on at the same time.”
“Yes?”
“Tell her we’re working on the world-walking mechanism. Her window of opportunity for negotiation is open
