“The same thing I’ve been doing, Carson. Keep on worming my way through this apple’s core.”
“Am I coming back here?”
“If I find something worth running you back in for.”
“And when do you contact me again?”
“When you’ve taken out the target. Here’s my one piece of advice, Carson. Don’t make it personal.”
“You’re really funny,” says the Operative.
“Go,” says Lynx.
And the Operative’s gone.
* * *
T ake a man. Take what price you can get for him. Get that man to gather data until he’s earned his passage home. See, there are some who crave information for political or military advantage. There are some who want it to further the cause. But you know better. At the end of the day, data dances to the beat of the markets. They’re all that matters.
Until an interloper comes calling…
Warbling rips through the dark. It’s the incoming line.
It wakes Spencer up.
He looks around. The walls press up around him. The light next to his head is glowing red in time with the signal of the incoming line. Spencer reaches to the switch, flips it.
“Hello,” he says.
He hears a series of clicks.
“Lyle Spencer,” says a voice.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“It’s four-thirty right now. You’d—”
“Exactly,” says Spencer. “It’s four-thirty. Good-bye—”
“No,” says the voice. And there’s something in it that makes Spencer pause. “You’d better get dressed. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”
“An hour? Here? Who do you think you are?”
“More important thing is who
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re hilarious. But you might still save yourself by staying exactly where you are.”
“
“If you want to find out, all you gotta do is wait. And if you do anything else, you’re nowhere near as smart as I’ve been hoping.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Tell me that in person.” The line goes dead.
Spencer doesn’t waste time. He’s already seen that the call hasn’t registered. He runs his hand across what’s left of his hairline, feels for a point behind his right ear. He slots wires, jacks in—lets his mind plunge down into the endless architecture of the U.S. zone. He darts back and forth amidst countless conduits. He can’t find a trace of the call. He could opt for more intensive measures. He could kick down doors. But not without increasing the risk of exposing his own position.
Though clearly that position’s been exposed to someone. He jacks out, watches zone wink out all around him. He retains its frozen image in his head while he plays with strategies and replays the voice recording at about triple the speed. Then at normal. Then at fifty percent. The voiceprints swim on the screens on his walls. The implications cluster on the ones in his head. But they hold nothing concrete.
He shakes his head as though to clear it. He pads to the kitchenette, throws some switches. He runs some water, starts grinding beans. He could just let the machine take care of it. But right now he feels like doing it himself. So he thinks and lets the coffee percolate.
When it’s done, he walks to the window. A whisper from him, and the blinds are opening slightly. Red glow suffuses the room. The towers of Minneapolis gleam. He watches the lights, sips the coffee while he sifts through issues. If this were the federals, they’d be kicking in his door. They wouldn’t be bothering with this bullshit. But if not the federals…then who? Spencer’s never met a free agent inside North America before. If that’s who it is. But if it is, they must have some kind of maneuverability.
But now he hears something.
It’s coming from the corridor outside his door. He goes motionless. It’s been a lot less than an hour. A light chime wafts through the room as the doorbell sounds.
Spencer moves to the closet, retrieves his pistol. He cocks it. He creeps to the door, presses himself up against the wall beside it. He triggers the voice-switch.
“Yes,” he says.
“Lemme in,” says the voice that Spencer’s only heard once in his life before.
“Sure,” says Spencer. He checks the image on the screen. There’s nothing there. Just empty corridor.
“Hurry up,” says the voice.
“Hold on,” says Spencer. “Lights,” he adds. The stretch of corridor outside his conapt is filled with glow. The corridor’s still empty. Spencer flips the manual switch for the conapt’s lights and sets them on low.
“Stop fucking around,” says the voice.
“Open,” says Spencer.
The door opens.
A man enters the room. He’s Spencer’s height, but he’s got a lot more bulk. None of it looks to be fat. He wears a unistretch jumpsuit. His hair’s cropped close about his head. His face borders on the wizened. The eyes retract deep into the crevasses of the skin that folds about them. They seem to live in a way that the rest of that face does not. Spencer takes all this in in an instant. He keeps the pistol pointed at the man. The door slides shut.
“Lyle Spencer,” says the man. He grins, but it’s not much of one. “You alone?”
“I will be when I pull this trigger.”
“That’s the kind of talk that makes me edgy.”
“I can live with that.”
“Look,” says the man. “If I meant you harm, I wouldn’t have given you warning.”
“I’m really not interested in your assurances, my man,” says Spencer. He extends the arm that’s holding the pistol, raises it up toward the level of the man’s head. “What interests me is what you’re trying to pull. You call me unannounced in the middle of the night. On a line that turns out to be completely stealth. Now you’re standing in my apartment uninvited. In another moment you’ll be bleeding from a head wound unless you tell me exactly what you want.”
“Name’s Linehan,” says the man. “I’m here to help you.”
“No you’re not,” says Spencer. “You’re either here to arrest me, or you’re about to get me arrested. It’s one or the other.”
“Actually,” says the man mildly, “it’s neither.”
“In that case, I’ll say it one last time, and I promise it’ll be the last thing you ever hear if you don’t start talking sense. What do you
“To lower the risks to both of us. Look, let me tell you what I
“Information about what?”
“The Priam Combine.”
“The who?”
“Spencer, you really
