Safe House

“Our operative had been at Baltimore-Washington, and we were unable to get an operative to Dulles in time to do a more effective intercept. Not that the security systems in operation would have made a straight ‘lift’ of the boy possible at that time.”

“Considering the case in hand, you should have had someone at all that area’s airports.”

“Budget limitations do not permit us such latitude, sir,” she said. “I am sorry.”

There it was, she had had to say it. Now all she could do was wonder how he would take it.

To the major’s amazement, Bioru let it pass. “As long as you know where the boy is now.”

“We were able to determine that immediately from the local traffic computers,” the major said, “to which the DC area police have access. Fortunately we have a source in the police force. Such personnel are chronically underpaid, and usually do not look carefully at where their data goes after they allow it to be leaked.”

He nodded at that, turned over another page. “Just in a private house, though, you say.”

“Yes, sir. In the suburbs. We are running a background check on the father at the moment. There are some connections which are not immediately analyzable, but that is understandable, when a background in political science is involved. The mother and the rest of the family are of no interest.”

“You have someone doing surveillance at the house now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is it someone you trust?”

She swallowed. “For the moment.”

Bioru looked up sharply, held her gaze for a moment. “Surely you’re not angling for an assignment over there for yourself,” he said.

“I have the language skills, granted,” said the major, “but I have more pressing matters occupying me here.”

“Such as?”

She knew an incoming rebuke when she saw it, and understood the message that nothing was more important than this was at the moment, at least to this man. “Sir,” she said, “I am entirely at your disposal in this regard.” Then she immediately became sorry she had used the word “disposal.”

“Huh,” Bioru said, a noncommittal sound, and turned his attention back to his papers, turned a couple of them over. “It says here that work has begun on questioning the father’s immediate associates,” he said. “‘Equivocal results,’ it says here.”

“The associates are—”

“One of them is dead,” Bioru said. “I would not normally call that ‘equivocal.’ What kind of bunglers are you employing over there?”

“Sir, we can be as conscientious as anyone would wish—”

“Not so much so as I would wish, plainly.”

“—but we can hardly be held responsible for physiological reactions toward which the subject has never previously shown any tendency. The woman who died had no history of any kind of cardiac difficulty; she had undergone the usual pre-questioning workup to rule out anything that might interfere. Her cardiac arrest was attended by the university doctors, and they confirmed that such things happen sometimes without any clear reason—”

“Except pain,” Bioru said dryly. “You overdid it. Or your ‘technician’ did. I want that person removed to other duties. No one is to work on this project except the most senior tech we have who’s qualified for this work.”

She swallowed. “Sir, it was the most senior tech who was involved.”

He stared at her for a long moment…then pulled the paperwork over again and let out a breath. “Nothing was yet proven against that woman when she died,” he said, looking down and paging through it. “That leaves us in an unpleasant moral situation. I should make him pay compensation to the family out of his own salary.” Bioru sighed. “All right…let him stay. But I want his junior technician to work with him closely and monitor all his intervention choices. If he catches his boss in a mistake, well, we save another of these poor creatures for further investigation, and the underling gets a promotion.”

“Yes, sir.” The major had no quarrel with that method of operation. It was what she had used to get into her present position.

“So on to more urgent matters. The father—”

“Is still missing,” she said. “But the search continues. The scientists with whom he routinely socializes at the university have been as cooperative as their personal loyalties allow.” She got another sharp look for that. “Sir,” she said, “if they are to remain of any use to us as scientists, we must take some care not to overly alienate them. They do understand our security concerns—”

“They had better,” Bioru growled. “Those are more important than the whole pack of them. They’d better come to understand that. Better have some ‘friendly’ source whisper that news in their cars before we have to make examples of a few more of them. Your dead one here — an accident she may have been, but maybe she’ll speed the process up a little…get the rest of them thinking harder about letting us know exactly where Darenko might have thought to hide himself away. A chance word could make the difference between finding him quickly, or taking forever about it and looking incompetent. See to it.” He pushed the papers away again. “Meanwhile, what news on the search?”

“Nothing new, sir. He does not seem to be in the city.”

He pushed himself back in his chair and gave her a look of extreme annoyance. “It’s not as if he’ll have managed to get across the border,” he said. “He’s in-country somewhere. Have the usual statements gone out to the press?”

“Yes, sir.” Privately the major had her doubts about the effectiveness of these CITIZENS! HELP YOUR LEADER! announcements. Most citizens didn’t have the brains to find their own fundaments with a flashlight and a road map, and the rest could be surprisingly obstructive at times, even in the extreme cases when rewards were offered. Hoax responses to these announcements abounded, usually leaving you with more people to discipline and no useful results.

“Find him,” Bioru said. “Find him immediately. That’s all I want from you in that regard. Go door-to-door, use dogs, use infrared, use molecular air-sampling, use anything you have to. I want him searched for as carefully as evidence of a murder would be sought for, with people in fields poking every inch of the ground with sticks, if need be. Are you clear yet about how urgently he is needed? The president himself has asked to be briefed about this proceeding. And the performance of the personnel associated with it.”

The sweat broke out all over her, instantly, and she hoped desperately that it wouldn’t show. “Yes, sir,” the major said, and hoped her voice betrayed nothing of what she was feeling.

Those eyes went back to looking flat again, much to the major’s relief. “We have some other technicians,” Bioru said then, a little more calmly, “going through the extant data from the project at the moment. This could be very, very lucrative stuff…very useful. Most specifically, there are intelligence implications for us once we get the technique working and in production. The ability to carry the longest message undetectably, swimming free in a courier’s blood, assembling itself into content only on command…or the ability to take a rouge operative’s brain apart from the inside in a matter of hours. The little things eat holes all through it and leave it looking like a Swiss cheese. The results look just like, what was it called, mad cow disease.” He smiled a little at the image. “Even the North Americans have nothing like these little”—he lifted one of the pages, glanced down at it—“microps. And we intend to make sure it stays that way.”

He looked up at her. “The boy,” he said. “Preparations must be made to have him recovered, without fuss, on signal, and not a moment before or later…for we’ll need him to work on the father. I’ll give you details when you need them. Take the minimum of time to assess the situation and then get him out of there and back over here. You might want to exit the country in the opposite direction, toward the far east. They might not immediately expect that. Or the great-circle route over Canada. If you feel the need, go yourself,” he said. “I’ll authorize the expense immediately. But his recovery must be so managed as to happen before the father’s found, if what we’re planning is to have the maximum effect. His own interrogation is going to require that the part of it involving the boy be very precisely timed…otherwise the father will have no incentive to cooperate properly with us.” Bioru frowned. “He’s one of those stubborn ones as it is, a psych profile like a rock…the break-but-don’t-bend type. A nuisance, likely to kill himself to keep us from finding out what we need. However, if the boy’s situation has been made properly threatening…if the timing is right…he’ll not