“What graduate degrees?”
Sam smiled. “You’re narrowing it down.”
“Don’t be a jerk. You’ve told me this much. Now give.”
“Computer science. Tech stuff. Ph. D.”
“So you were at school a lot.”
“Yeah, from about twelve on I was the boy wonder. The real key was this professor I had. He took me under his wing. He’s the reason I did well in college. He figured out a way for me to read like a normal person, and after that I read fanatically.”
“And your son?”
Sam hesitated. “My son was killed. We were on a job. It was my fault.”
“What happened?”
“I’d rather not go into it now. Maybe another time.”
She waited a few seconds, looking for the plane. “Okay.”
Ten
In six hours Anna was out of Vancouver and on her way to New York.
After seeing her off in the studio’s Gulfstream IV, Sam climbed into a Hawker 700 for the trip to LA. The Hawker was an old workhorse business jet, worth maybe one-fifth as much as the plane that came for Anna. It was owned by Sam’s friend, who let him use it for a fee. Sam was a no-frills guy even when it came to his choice of jets.
At Sam’s request the pilots had been good enough to obtain some tobacco leaves and a humidor that originally came from a Cuban national who for years had supplied Sam.
Inside the jet things were posh and comfortable. The plane’s sidewalls were wood and, near the floor, carpet. On the ceiling and upper sidewalls it was two-tone, stitched leather. Sam settled into a seat with Atlas- sized armrests and watched the flight information display monitor for a couple of minutes before he cracked open his small tobacco box.
He could understand his friend’s wife not wanting their plane to smell like a cigar, even a good cigar, but there was no law against rolling one. Sam took a large unblemished tobacco leaf and rolled the smaller leaves and pieces inside it to make a loose facsimile of a real cigar. When he had it all carefully rolled, he stuffed it in a cigar tube and screwed on the lid. Sometime this week he would smoke it.
He picked up the sat phone built into the plane and called Paul.
“Hi,” Sam began.
“Well, well, well, you’re coming back to work. I heard you’ve got Jill back in the saddle. And Shohei called me.”
“It’s a particular assignment.”
“Hey, you know me. I’m in.”
Sam spent a solid forty minutes telling Paul the whole story.
“This could only happen to Sam the History Man,” Paul said when he was through asking questions. “Now let me get this straight. You’re telling me that Anna Wade doesn’t even know the rules?”
“No contract yet. I told her not to talk. She’s not fooling me. I figure she’ll go ask around about me. She’s a control freak.”
“From what you’ve told me she also has no sponsor.”
“We’ll fix that. Let’s see what she does.”
“From what you gleaned it sounds like she’s most likely to spill the beans to her ex or her boyfriend. We gonna need somebody in New York?”
“Oh, yeah. For protection, mainly, but also to keep the lid on any snooper stuff. Let’s impress her. We’ll find out a lot in the first few hours.”
They talked over the details of what they would need to do in the next twenty-four hours. It was a long list.
“Have Farris get the ESN number and the phone number on Anna’s cell. They’ve got the contacts, probably cost a few grand.”
“Use an oscillator?”
“Yeah. Record every word.”
“You’re gonna feel like a shit.”
“I know. Do you think I should call Typhony?” Sam asked, now satisfied that Paul understood.
“She’s one of the best researchers we ever had. She can make Big Brain sing songs and tell secrets. You already got one ex-lover back in the biz, why not two?”
“You think her boyfriend will be all right with it?” Sam said.
“Fiance, you mean. Yeah, I do. He’s a good guy.”
“There’s an undertone there.”
“No undertone. I just never figured out why you and she didn’t stay connected.”
“One of those mysteries.”
“Truth’s truth, Sam. Commitment bores you. That was Jill and that was Typhony. So you gonna call Typhony or am I?”
“She’s got another job, doesn’t she?”
David Dun
Overfall
“Sam, she’ll be crushed if you don’t even call and ask. She’s an executive assistant for some stuffed shirt. And you never know what she’ll do till you ask.”
“But for one assignment?”
“Hey, nobody believes that retirement crap. You want me to call?”
“I’ll call.” Sam now knew exactly how Paul’s conversation with Typhony had gone. But it was necessary to play it out. It might be as long as twenty-four hours before she was back in the office.
Sam’s finger was poised over the button. Once he dialed there was no turning back. The choice was still his until he dialed the number. It was about as awkward as a man finding his sister making love to his wife, but other than that the call was a breeze. After Typhony finished the verbal torture, Sam got down to the big question, and after appropriate hesitation and more than the usual verbal sparring she took the job.
“Talk to Paul, of course,” Sam told her, “and get the full story from him. But do a complete search on Dr. Kenneth Galbraith, psychiatrist. Where he went to school, all the doctors in his class; any publications; every mention of him in the press; credit check; all the usual. And start having someone go through his garbage immediately. No doubt he’ll have a cell. Figure it out, get the ESN, the whole nine yards, and get one of our contract guys listening to his calls. If we get anything at all we’ll arrange more groundwork. If he lives remotely, use the drone, get blowups; otherwise drive-bys are okay. Then in the morning begin interviews immediately. Use Royce and associates. When you’ve got Royce going, help Paul on Grace Technologies: one Roberto Fresco, its vice president; DuShane Chellis, the president. I forgot to mention to Paul I think we should call our friends in Brussels and have them work on the France end. I’d like that outfit Discretion.”
“I don’t know how you end up with the most famous and the most troubled,” she said. “But that’s okay,” she added before he could respond. “We knew you’d come back, and I guess Anna Wade is as good an excuse as any.”
Devan Gaudet was looking forward to seeing the offices of Grace Technologies without its master ushering him around. Although he had been in the building a number of times as the need for his services increased, his movements were always controlled. Headquarters stood on the Rue de l’Arrivee, a block from the Luxembourg Gardens, where Chellis reportedly paced when in the throes of a deal.
For a Paris office, Grace’s was expensive, which meant that by the standards of most of the world’s cities it was exorbitant. Devan Gaudet looked up at the building from the small entry plaza just outside the main doors.
