Safe House

Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Diane Duane Safe House

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We’d like to thank the following people, without whom this book would have not been possible: Diane Duane, for help in rounding out the manuscript; Martin H. Greenberg, Larry Segriff, Denise Little, and John Helfers at Tekno Books; Mitchell Rubenstein and Laurie Silvers at Hollywood.com; Tom Colgan of Penguin Putnam Inc.; Robert Youdelman, Esquire; Tom Mallon, Esquire; and Robert Gottlieb of the William Morris Agency, agent and friend. We much appreciated the help.

PROLOGUE

His father had told him repeatedly that everything would be all right. The two things that surprised Laurent, after the fact, were how little he believed this — even though he went along with the plan — and, even though he’d been told there was nothing to be afraid of, how blindingly afraid he was.

The talk between him and his pop had been very light all the way to the train station — chatter about school, and school food, and Laurent’s performance in the last soccer game against Garoafa (it had been terrible — Laurent wished his father wouldn’t keep bringing it up).

They had walked as usual from the side street where their apartment was located, into the middle of town through Piata Unirii with its huge, ugly blockish high-rise buildings left over from the middle of the last century, and out the other side of the plaza to the Foesani train station. There they made their way past the armed guards as usual, showing their ID cards and their train passes, and went down the stairs under the tracks, coming up on the other side to stand on the bleak gray platform with all the other people in their dark coats and somber dresses. The weather was unseasonably chilly — a surprisingly raw wind for June was sweeping down from the low misty line of the mountains to the north. The wind whistled in the overhead wires that powered the local electric trains — the few of them still running — and made Laurent shiver. At least that was the excuse he gave himself.

From down the tracks came a loud, sour hoot, the cry of one of the old diesel locomotives usually used for hauling freight but now released for passenger hauling work in the summer, when there was theoretically no need to supply the carriages with heat. Laurent was a little train-mad, as were many kids in his part of the world. The trains spoke to them of travel, of other places different from home, and of (whisper it) freedom — places where (rumor had it) the transit went on one rail rather than two, on maglev rather than wheels, or hybrid air/lox jets rather than turboprops.

There was no way to tell if the rumors were true — the government didn’t let the local Net or media say much about such things, all products of the decadent cultures outside the borders. But in the meantime, the trains Laurent could see any day at the station were interesting, if not particularly varied, and he knew them all like old friends. This one was ST43-260, a diesel made at the old 23 August Factory down in Bucuresti, a low, flat-faced locomotive with two headlamps and big windshield plates that made it look like a huge, dim, friendly bug. Lurching and creaking, with the ting and clang of hanging ’tween-cars chains accompanying it as it came, the dirty cream and dingy red ST43 pulled up to them and past them, hauling the ten second-class carriages, all ancient CFR stock from before the turn of the century, creaking and groaning behind it. It came grumbling and hissing to a stop, the diesel roar of the loco only slightly subdued by a couple of hundred yards’ distance.

Normally they would have gotten right on — other people started pushing past them and doing so. But his father was looking down the platform, looking for someone, and Laurent found himself suddenly wishing, irrationally, Don’t let him come. Let’s not do it. I wish—

“There he is,” his father said, suddenly sounding very relieved. “Iolae!” He waved at a broad figure in a dark coat, away down the platform.

The figure approached them, hurrying a little through the crowd, smiling, and as he came up to them and put out a hand for Laurent’s father to shake, Laurent was filled with misgivings. The two men didn’t look anything like brothers, his father tall and blond and a little hawkish-looking, except for the glasses, which transformed the hawk- face into the slight squinting expression of an owl; the newcomer shorter, stouter, broad-faced, balding. This isn’t going to fool anybody, Laurent thought, the sweat breaking out on him. And when the police figure it out, they’ll just take us off the train and—

“Thought I was going to be late, didn’t you,” said his “uncle,” and bent to hug Laurent. Laurent reciprocated, but there was no warmth about it, though neither his father nor his “uncle” seemed to notice.

They pushed their way into the line with all the other people, and got up into the train, showing their ID cards and tickets again to the bored guard standing in the doorway beside the train conductor. Then they slowly made their way down the aisle, Laurent glancing around him as he always did in hopes of spotting a piece of new, or at least different, equipment on this line. Not much chance of that, though, he thought. He knew this train-car by heart — the grimy linoleum — Laurent sometimes spent long minutes trying to figure out what pattern had been there when the linoleum was new — no telling now — the torn or cracked maroon “leather” seats, cream-enameled walls with the paint chipping, bent-out-of-shape wire mesh luggage racks propped up high between back-to-back pairs of seats. Laurent sometimes tried to imagine what this stock had looked like when it was new, back in 1980 sometime. It was like trying to imagine what dinosaurs had looked like. He sighed and followed his father and “uncle” until his pop saw an open seat, and they all crowded together onto it.

All the while the newcomer and Laurent’s father were talking as if they actually were brothers, laughing sometimes, talking about work. Mostly this meant Laurent’s father not saying much, of course. You never knew who might be listening. He was a biologist, but he rarely spoke much about exactly what kind of biology he was doing, and wise people didn’t ask. It was just as well, since he was working for the government. With the privilege came a certain amount of responsibility — or, to Laurent’s mind, a certain amount of danger. But he didn’t mention this any more than his father did. It was understood.

After a few moments the train lurched forward, and Laurent sighed a little, relieved, and not entirely certain why. Normally his father would get off at the next stop, and then Laurent would get off at the one after that, closest to his school, which was just outside the Focsani town limits. Today, though, was special. Today he was going on a day trip with his uncle Iolae to Brasov, to see the old castle where Voivod Vlad Dracul had lived, across the border in Transylvania. He had repeated the story over to himself a hundred times since his father first explained it to him, doing his best to learn it so well that it would sound natural if somebody from the police asked him—

And the train was stopping already at Focsari-Nov. Laurent gulped. His father glanced at him. “So enjoy yourself,” his father said, reached out, and gave Laurent a hug.

Laurent hugged him back — and suddenly felt terrible pain all through him, and sweat starting out again all over him, so that he was sure everyone must be able to see it. This was it, they were saying goodbye, and he didn’t know when he was going to see his father again. I might never— But no. That was a dumb idea. No matter how dangerous things were getting at work, his father wouldn’t send him away forever without telling him first.

Would he?

His father pushed him away, not hard, but briskly enough, as if they both had things to be doing. “You mind your uncle now,” he said, and patted Laurent on the shoulder. “Have a nice day.”

“I will, Pop,” he said, his mouth dry. Laurent’s father reached down to the other man, shook his hand again warmly, if casually, the gesture of someone he expected to see again that afternoon — except that Laurent knew he wouldn’t. And for the first time Laurent began to realize that his father was a pretty good actor, and that could be one of the reasons that all this would work out the way he said it would.

“You have a nice time now,” his pop said to “Uncle Iolae.” “Thanks for taking him. Don’t let him get out of hand.”

“I don’t imagine he will,” said the other man. He thumped Laurent’s father good-naturedly on the arm, and