Imagination had its uses, but it must be controlled. The intellect must be tempered by experience.
Aristotle’s gloss on Plato, in a sense.
“Set up a very strong operation around Dean,” Rubens told Farlekas. “We can’t lose track of him this time, not even for a moment.”
“If he has this disease—”
“If he has it, we have to find a cure for it. And right now, he may be our best shot at it. Prepare for that contingency, but the operation must move forward. There is no other choice.”
Farlekas remained silent for a moment.
“One other thing, chief.”
“Yes?”
“CDC confirmed ten of those cases they were looking at. Only one has a connection they can find to the Kegan house and victim. They have more to look into. A lot more.”
“A lot more being how many?”
“Two hundred.”
“I’ll be back at the Art Room in about forty minutes.”
31
“You don’t look that good, Charlie Dean.”
“Thanks, princess.”
“Don’t ever call me that.” Lia stood up from the table, her chair legs screeching against the tiled floor of the hotel cafe. “Tommy calls me that and I hate it.”
“You ever tell him that?”
“He’s not important enough to tell.”
“Sorry.” Dean rubbed his eyes with his hand. His stomach had settled a bit, but he hadn’t felt like eating anything. “It cold in here?”
Lia reached across the table and put her hand against his forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m okay,” he told her. “I’ll be okay. Let’s just get this thing over with.”
“Charlie — this isn’t going to be like yesterday. These guys are very serious.”
He pushed himself up from the table and narrowed his eyes. “I’m fine. Just let’s get going, all right? How does the com system work?”
Dean pushed away from the table, willing his legs to stop wobbling. He was chilled, as if he were getting a bad fever, but he’d been through worse, much worse, and he was going to get through this thing now.
Where the hell was Keys? He’d warned him about food poisoning once, more than once, gone on in great detail.
“Touch the back of your belt,” said Lia.
“Specific spot?”
“Any spot. That turns it on. Has to be your finger — it keys to your personal magnetic field. If you turn it off, they can’t hear you. Don’t pay attention to what Rockman says. It’s agent-controlled.”
“You all right, Charlie?” said Rockman in his ear. The voice was even spookier than with the eyeglass system, a whisper that could belong to God, or at least a guardian angel.
“Yeah, I’m cool. Let’s get this stinkin’ show on the road, huh?”
Lia watched Dean walk out of the restaurant. Like nearly every man she’d met, he was a stoic asshole when it came to being sick.
Most likely, it was just food poisoning, something in the overly rich cream sauces that had been slathered over their food. But she couldn’t dismiss the notion that Dean had been poisoned by the people who had kidnapped him, though why wasn’t clear.
Outside the hotel, Lia watched Dean flag down a taxi. It was one of theirs, driven by a low-level embassy CIA officer she’d borrowed. A van manned by the Air Force people Desk Three had shanghaied from Germany started out after the taxi pulled away; two more Air Force security types were already in the park where Dean was headed. Lia got into her rental Renault and slid on a headset, which was connected to a small radio in her purse. The unit allowed her to tie into the military people, who were using Special Forces-style PSC-5 radios, with satellite phones as backups.
“All right, let’s all check in,” she said.
Two of the Air Force people spoke over each other.
“Let’s keep the testosterone down, please,” she snapped. “Sean,” she said, picking the team leader in the first van, “you’re first.”
As they drove toward the park, Lia took out her handheld computer and fired it up, switching into the surveillance net covering the area where Dean had been dropped off the day before. Small video cams had been placed atop the brick pillars that stood at the two entrances; between them they covered 96 percent of the park. A gussied-up Fokker with optical sensors — an NSA-owned “Eyes” asset — orbited to the south, providing real-time video and sharper-resolution, near-real-time digital still feeds of anything they wanted superior detail on, like license plates and faces. Operated by an Air Force Special Operations crew that did not officially exist, the plane had twice the capability of the CIA model it had been based on — a William Rubens requirement. It could fly between three and five miles away from a target and still provide reasonable surveillance, though it had to be careful about local flight rules.
“Dean’s just getting there,” Rockman told her. “Locator’s working fine. Did he take his iodine supplements?”
“What am I, his nurse?”
“My, we’re cranky today,” said Telach.
Theoretically, the radioactive material used by the tracking system posed no threat — as long as it remained solid. If it broke up in his body — occasionally this happened — the iodine could be absorbed by his thyroid, which was why he’d been given supplements to block it.
“Dean’s in the park, walking to the bench,” said Rockman. “All right, everybody be real careful now. We don’t want to get too obvious.”
Lia ignored Rockman, leaning out the window to get a glimpse of the park. She saw Dean sitting at the bench; then her view was obscured by two old people feeding the pigeons.
“Go around,” she told her driver. “I want to keep him in sight.”
“That wasn’t what you had laid out earlier.”
“I changed my mind.”
Dean felt the boards at the back of the bench slap into his back as he sat. His whole body seemed achy.
Maybe it wasn’t food poisoning. Maybe it was the flu.
Good. Maybe he’d give it to these bastards.
His stomach pressed up against his esophagus, and for a second he thought he was going to have to find a bush. But it calmed, and he started to feel a bit better.
A husband and wife, obviously American tourists, stopped near him.
“Would you take our picture?” asked the woman, gesturing with a camera.
Dean hesitated, then reached for the camera. He felt slightly dizzy but managed to take the picture for them. When he sat back down, an old lady wearing far too much perfume had perched herself at the other end of the bench. She had a paper bag of popcorn, which she tossed out piece by piece to the pigeons.
Dean looked in the other direction, waiting for the goons.
Let’s get this thing over with, he thought to himself.
