The Archimedes Effect

“Looks like some kind of signal generator,” she said.

Jay finally found his tongue. “Narrowcaster,” he said. “Probably set to send a slimbeam radio or LOS pulse. We need to see if we can figure out where it was sending its signal.”

She needed to give him another victory. She said, “It seems awfully small.”

“You’re right. Probably there’s a camouflaged parabolic dish here somewhere,” he said. “This thing is too weak to have much push. The dish will boost and relay the sig. Find that, and we can figure out which direction to head in.”

She nodded. “You’re really good at this, Jay. A lot better than I am.”

“You found this page,” he said.

“You would have when you got around to looking.”

He nodded. That was true enough, she knew. Of course, he wouldn’t have known he was supposed to find it because she had put it here for him to find.

Lewis knew she didn’t need to be entirely stupid here. Really bright men were often attracted to smart women, especially if the men were confident in their fields of expertise. That she was also competent at what Jay did was a plus—by being so, she could understand how really impressive he was, and he’d know that. Just as a good amateur basketball player could appreciate a real expert’s skill better than somebody who couldn’t play at all, her being able to run with him at least part of the way was good. Everybody liked an appreciative audience. Impressing the rubes was one thing; impressing other experts in your field was something better. And everything Jay Gridley did from here on out was going to impress the hell out of her. Oh, Jay. You’re so smart. And so good-looking, too . . .

“Let’s see if we can find the dish,” he said.

“Where do you want me to look?” she asked. Let him be the director. Anything you want me to do, Jay, just say the word. Anything at all . . .

“Check the bushes on the left, over that way. I’ll go to the right.”

“You’re the man,” she said.

She knew the dish Jay was looking for was to the left, but she also knew she was going to miss it on her search, leaving it to Jay to come and find and point it out to her. Another victory for which she could admire him. You’re so smart, Jay. So adept. I bet you’re good in bed, too, huh? Wanna show me how good?

She grinned to herself. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

It was just a matter of time. A small push, and he would fall, and she would be under him when he came down. She was going to enjoy it, and on more than one level, too.

22

Washington, D.C.

Somebody was following Carruth.

He hadn’t gotten a good look at the guy, only the car he was driving, and while it might be paranoia, Carruth didn’t think it was. There was a late-model American something-or-other back there, one of those boxy little sedans that looked like everything else produced in the U.S. in the last ten years, with some stupid, made-up name—a Springa or Freemele, something like that. Chevy, Ford, Dodge? It didn’t matter.

Carruth was on his way back from the Safeway, where he’d picked up staples. He wasn’t much of a cook, but there were times when he didn’t feel like going out to eat, so he kept the freezer stocked with stuff he could microwave—burritos and pocket sandwiches and chicken strips, like that. Low-fat, most of it. Plus cereal and milk and coffee and beer. And fruit, lots of apples and bananas and oranges and pears and grapes. Too much junk food, you got fat, and you needed fresh produce to oil the works. Fruit was good.

So, every couple of weeks he’d make a run, fill a basket up with stuff, and he’d be good for a while.

As he’d left his home and walked out to his car, heading to the supermarket, he’d seen the little gray nothingmobile, one of four or five cars that went by as he cheeped his car’s locks. He hadn’t paid any real attention to it, no reason to do so. It was on the radar, but low priority.

The market was six blocks away from his house, and halfway there, he caught a glimpse of the same car in his rearview mirror.

Still no alarms—there were a million automobiles like it on the road. But when you were in a business where what you were doing was either iffy or outright illegal, you had to pay more attention to things. He couldn’t ever forget those two cops, what a screwup that had been.

He’d hit the grocery store, loaded his purchases into the car, and cranked it up. And as he left the lot, he saw the gray car pull out behind him. Couldn’t read the plates, but they were local, he could see that much.

Third time was the charm.

Could be it was just his imagination, but he couldn’t take that chance. He turned at the first intersection he came to. Not going home just yet . . .

After he had gotten out of the Navy, Carruth had figured he would be a merc, a soldier of fortune, working for whoever had the money to pay him. He’d done a little of that, in a couple places—North Africa, South America. He’d drifted into civilian security for a company in Iraq and Iran—that paid real well—which is where he’d hooked up with some of the team he was running now. On one of the civilian gigs, he’d worked with an ex-spook by the name of Dormer. Or maybe he wasn’t ex. You never could tell with those guys, they’d climb a tree to tell a lie rather than stand on the ground and tell the truth. But Dormer was an old guy who knew his stuff, and when things were slack, which was most of the time, he’d teach Carruth little bits and pieces of spycraft.

Dormer was about sixty, and as average-looking as you could get—medium height and weight, and in-country he wore a moustache and dyed it and his hair black so that with his tan he could pretty much pass for a local. He spoke the language, dressed like most men on the street, and Carruth had once watched him walk into a crowd and just vanish, as if he had turned invisible.

Dormer showed him the ropes, including drops, how to tail somebody without being seen—and how to spot a tail without letting him know you’d made him.

“Thing about being followed,” Dormer had said, “is that it’s easy to check if all you want to do is know if you’re being tailed. The trick is to do it so the guy on your ass doesn’t know you’ve spotted him.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, my large ex-SEAL friend, if the guy thinks he’s burned, he’ll drop off and they will replace him with somebody else. Better the tail you know than the tail you don’t.”

Carruth had nodded. Yeah, he could see that.

“So you think the guy half a block back is on you, doesn’t matter if he’s on foot or in a car, you don’t turn around and stare at him. You’re driving, you don’t slam on your brakes and pull over, making him pass. You don’t run a red light and wait to see if he runs it after you. You don’t do anything that makes it look as if you have a clue. You want him to think you are blind, deaf, and stupid.”

“What do you do?”

The older man had grinned. “Listen and learn, son. . . .”

Dormer had disappeared for real a couple months after that conversation. Gone into the desert in a van with some guys heading south to haul something illegal to an Iraqi port city, and far as Carruth could tell, nobody had ever seen any of them again. Probably he was bleached bones in the desert sands, though Carruth kinda liked to think the old spook was still out there somewhere, wheeling and dealing.

Driving through the streets of the District, Carruth remembered the lesson. He wasn’t going to go directly home. He had a little stop to make first, and it had to be in the right location.

He drove for a few blocks, turned left, went another half mile, then turned right. He didn’t hurry, and while he made enough turns so that it would have to be an unbelievably big coincidence for anybody to accidentally stay with him, he was heading for a particular place and making reasonable efforts to get there via a reasonable route.

There was a cutlery shop Carruth went to sometimes to check out the knives, those being basic tools of his trade. He usually carried a tactical folder, and sometimes a little push-dagger disguised as a belt buckle, or even a