Good Guys

by Steven Brust

  “Then I can’t confirm what I suspect, but I would suggest, Mr. Becker, that we keep this information confined to only those who need to know it.”

  “That seems a good suggestion, Mr. Longfellow. What do you have?”

  “One other thing first. Would you mind giving Budget and Oversight a kick for me? I’ve submitted a requisition for a guy who got me useful information, and won’t give me any more until he’s paid.”

  “How useful?”

  “He established a connection between Lawton-Smythe and Blum.”

  “I see. Very impressive. Yes, I’ll speak with them at once.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Becker. Here’s the first thing you need to know: We’re after two of them. One is a man; we don’t know about the other, but he or she is the more interesting, and dangerous, of the two.”

  “I’m listening, Mr. Longfellow.”

  * * *

  T. Rex was such a cliche. But so what? Susan stood across from that magnificent jaw and stared. “Hello, Sue, I’m Susan,” she murmured as she always did. Then she turned her back on Sue and continued through the Field Museum of Natural History. She had grown up in Cook County, and as a child had lived for family trips to the museum, and when she was old enough to travel herself had visited it at least twice a month. Walking through the echoing halls felt like a homecoming.

  It wasn’t the power that drew Susan in; it was the sense of age, of time. It humbled her, filled her with awe. It was the same awe that, she was sure, astronomers felt when considering the insignificance of Earth in the cosmos. These things walked, lived, ate, shat, mated, died, decayed for such a long time, and so long ago, that not just her lifetime, but the life of her species, was insignificant. Seeing them, so close she could touch them, made them real.

  She had long ago stopped trying to understand why the powerful assurance of her insignificance was so calming, but it was.

  After a few hours, relaxed and happy and pleased to live in a world where the Field Museum of Natural History existed, she made a call to her parents, and arranged to spend a day with them before she headed back to the parking garage where the slipwalk would take her back to Portland.

  * * *

  Marci sat in the kitchen drinking herbal tea and listening to Pink Floyd, very softly. And he calls Susan a hippie, she thought. She glanced over at the clock. Four thirty. Lawrence needed to be up in two hours. She reflected on the last week. She didn’t especially want to, but she did anyway.

  Someone had shot at her. Actually shot at her. This was her life now. And Lawrence was in the bedroom, sleeping. Jesus.

  She had a mad desire to call William and scream at him, say, You didn’t tell me it would be like this.

  Except that he had. He hadn’t hidden anything from her. “It’ll be scary sometimes,” he’d told her when she’d first announced her desire to go into fieldwork. “Your life is liable to be threatened. There will be times when you’ll need to be at your best just to stay alive.”

  She’d nodded as if she’d understood. She’d thought she’d understood.

  But then he’d looked at her and said, “You’ll be fine,” and she had been. When it mattered, she had been. She remembered Donovan looking at her when the bullets sparked in front of her face—inches in front of her face—she’d seen them stop, and fall to the ground. And Donovan had looked at her and said, without words, You’re fine. You’ll do.

  William knew she could handle it. Donovan knew she could handle it. Why didn’t she know she could handle it? She could almost hear William’s voice answering her: It doesn’t matter if you think you can handle it, he would have said. It matters if you handle it.

  Recruitment and Training—they called it the kiddie pool, though she’d never met a trainee younger than twelve and most were much older. Awareness of the grid seemed to emerge at different times: In many, it was late puberty. In others, it was when the cerebral cortex was about done growing, around the early twenties.

  At first, they had her practice finding the nodes—laughably easy and fun, as it often involved visiting scenic areas, or interesting spots in different cities; she had gone to Chichen Itza, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Hong Kong, Cairo, and Delhi; she had seen Victoria Falls, the Great Sphinx, Stonehenge, the Grand Canyon, Parícutin, the Temple of Artemis, the Great Wall of China. All in a month. It was amazing and wonderful and still gave her glorious Technicolor dreams from time to time.

  Learning to find grid points—where two lines came together—was nearly as easy, but, alas, didn’t require as much travel. And finally, the lines themselves; once her teacher had explained what they felt like, they also came naturally and easily to her.

  Then they tried to teach her to shape, to cast, to form what she could touch, and it was like trying to sprint through water—so much exhaustion for so little result. But she’d done it. She’d learned. She’d been driven. She was sixteen then, and what sixteen-year-old doesn’t dream of standing high on a mountain casting fire at a balrog, or blasting into a castle to have a magic duel with an evil overlord? Yes, there was a great deal she’d never be able to do: The trickier transmutations were closed to her, and the easier ones quickly made her too cold or too hot, and working with light just confused her.

  But her teachers didn’t give her time to dwell on what she couldn’t do. They taught her how to find the remaining energy of a spell, and use what was left to determine what was done—tell a story by the words that hadn’t been used. The part of her brain that loved mathematics as a gourmet loved food at once latched on to it, and, as with mathematics, she fell in love with the process, the diving in, constructing, deducing, concluding, diving deeper, over and over until she had it all. Each new technique they taught her fed her hunger the way a dry log feeds a fire. How to tell if someone was lying, how to tell if someone was watching with a hostile attitude, how to read intent in result and determine content from shape.

  It was during that time, when everything was wonderful, that she met Lawrence, an American exchange student whose father had lost his job and could no longer afford to keep him at MIT. They’d had a year together, though, scrimping and sharing food and sneaking him in and out of her flat, and when her training was done the Foundation had given her permission to move in with him. Then one day a tall, athletic woman had come up to her in the middle of class and said, “Hello, Marci. I’m Susan Kouris. I’m with Investigations and Enforcement, North America. We’re looking for a sorcerer. Would you like to work with us?”

  Marci had asked questions, and Susan had answered everything clearly, fully, with a precise economy of language, and Marci had been given training in Sensitivity Removal Protocol—how to remove someone’s ability to detect the grid, to use sorcery, which was the nuclear option for fieldwork. And then, twenty-four hours later, Marci was telling Lawrence about their new apartment in Boston, at Dudley and Albion, paid for by her new employer, whom she couldn’t name.

  And six weeks after that, Donovan called.

  And now she was being shot at. Her mother would have said, Buck up, kiddo. It just gets worse from here, and then given her that Mom-grin.

  She hoped she’d be able to get back home soon and introduce Lawrence to her family. She couldn’t afford to travel, but Susan said that once in a while the Foundation gave bonuses.

  She looked at the time, and started coffee for Lawrence. Since she was up anyway, she might as well do something useful.

  8

  A GOOD SORCERER IS HARD TO FIND

  Donovan stood up from the computer and started pacing—kitchen, through the living room, to the bathroom, and back. The shooter, the man with the shotgun. What was his game?

  By now, Donovan was convinced of two things: First, the Mystici were not the target as such—there lacked any relationship with importance in the organization. And second, that everyone killed had been a member was not coincidence.

  So, if not the Mystici, then what, or who? It felt like vengeance—particularly the way each death was more h
orrific than the last. But what was the connection? The phone call, months ago, between Blum and Lawton-Smythe must have meant something, but what? No professional connection; one was a teacher who practiced sorcery on the side, the other a recruiter. Assuming a connection with the others, one was a State Senator, and the last—so far—an insurance investor. The Senator had no sorcerous skill whatsoever; her only connection to the Mystici was taking money from them for some relatively minor peccadilloes that helped them in California. The insurance man, like Lawton-Smythe, had some abilities but little skill.

  There was a reason, a pattern. If he couldn’t see it, it was either because he was being dense, or because he didn’t have enough information yet.

  He stopped pacing, sat down on the couch, stood up, and started pacing again.

  Then he stopped and stared at the couch, frowning. He went back and dug his hand under the cushion, fished around, and pulled out a cell phone—a Nokia Lumia 630. The kind Matt had been carrying. It was on, set to silent, and the battery was almost dead.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  * * *

  Half an hour using the computer at the library provided Matt with a list of three phone numbers. He recognized that it should have taken him a third of the time, but computers just weren’t his thing.

  He got up and stepped outside into the March weather—snowy, nasty, and cold. There were definitely things he preferred about San Diego. He found a coffee shop, ordered a plain, black coffee, and punched in the first number on his list. The answer came quickly.

  “Hello?”

  “Santino. You’ll never guess who—”

  “Jesus Christ. Matt.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where the hell are you, man?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “New Jersey? Why there?”

  “Long story.”

  “God. You know we’ve been back since December?”

  “I know.”

  “You should have gotten in touch.”

  “You know why I haven’t.”

  “Man, no one blames you.”

  I do would have sounded obnoxiously self-pitying, so he said, “I need some help.”

  “You got it, bro. What do you need? Money?”

  “Money wouldn’t hurt; I’ve taken to ripping off drug dealers.”

  “Holy shit, man.”

  “It’s temporary. But that’s not the main thing. I’m following up some stuff that might get kinda hairy.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  “I don’t want to say, Santino.”

  “That bad, huh. What, is it Company shit, or private sector?”

  “Private sector.”

  “Money in it?”

  “Better than that, man. I’m going to be a fucking hero.”

  “Jesus, Matt. You know what that means. That means you’re gonna get lit up.”

  “Might could. Not the plan, though.”

  There was a pause. Then, “If you need backup, Howie got out.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Didn’t re-up. He was there before the rest of us.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. What’s he doing now?”

  Santino’s snort came over phone. “Getting treated for P. T.S.D. like everyone else.”

  Matt chuckled. “I don’t have his number; you got it? I don’t think I’ll need it, but you know.”

  Santino gave it to him and said, “What else? I’ve got about fifteen hundred bucks set aside.”

  “Naw. But thanks. Main thing is, you got any travel connections? This is going to involve a lot of T.A.D., and no way I can pay for it out of my own pocket.”

  “Foreign or domestic?”

  “Mostly domestic, a little foreign.”

  “Covert?”

  “Open. If I can go Space A on a commercial flight, that would work as well as anything else.”

  “I know a few people. Got an email address? I’ll send you a list.”

  “And put in a word?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  “You gonna brief me when this is over?”

  Matt hesitated. “I don’t know if it’s ever going to be over. But when you’re out, I might draft you. If you want to be a hero, I mean.”

  “Shit,” said Santino. “Who wouldn’t want that?”

  * * *

  Our meeting this time took place in the locker room of the YMCA, after hours. I don’t know how he arranged for the door to be open, but I’d stopped asking those questions long before. I followed his instructions, sitting on a bench in the middle of the second row, facing the third row.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  His voice echoed oddly from beyond the lockers. “There’s a problem,” he said.

  Those three words chilled me in a way that I hadn’t thought I could be chilled anymore. I managed to say, “What?” but it was an effort, like I was forcing speech past a closed throat.

  “We are being investigated, and it’s happening faster and more efficiently than I had expected.”

  “They might stop me?”

  “They might.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re going to handle it?”

  “No, I mean we have to stop. We have to delay for a while.”

  “How long?”

  “I’m working on something. I can’t give you an exact time or date.”

  “Charlie, I’m so close!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You know who is doing the investigating?”

  “Yes. He’s very good.”

  “What if—”

  “No. Don’t even think about it, Nick. You aren’t in any position to do that. Even I might not be able to pull it off—I’ve failed twice already—and I have considerably more resources than you. And, Nick, I don’t think you want to be that guy anyway, do you?”

  “Jesus, Charlie. I have no idea who I am or who I want to be anymore. All I know is what I need to do. What now, do I go back to Denver and sit on my ass for I don’t know how long? I’ll go crazy. I don’t even know where I’ll stay; I’ve probably been evicted by now.” I heard the whining in my voice and hated it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll put you up at a hotel. I’m going to try to figure something out. I hope it won’t be long. I have made preparations for this possibility.”

  “What preparations?”

  “You don’t need to know; you don’t want to know. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen is on me, and that’s how I want it. Let me do this. Please.”

  “I don’t know how long I can wait without going crazy.”

  “Yeah. Remember, I want this to happen as much as you do. But it’s better to wait than—”

  “All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

  “Thank you, Nick,” he said, like I was doing him a favor.

  * * *

  Becker was sometimes—rarely—referred to as the Ramrod. He was unaware of his nickname, because not only would no one dare use it to his face, but no one liked using it in the same building he was in, and when people did use it their voices tended to drop a little. That said, there had been, here and there, some speculation about where the name came from: The obvious explanation was that he was, after all, a senior manager in Investigation and Enforcement, aka “the Ranch.” But some suggested it had more to do with the way he walked, talked, and interacted with those above and below him: He didn’t have a lot of bend. And there were the obvious comments about where the hypothetical ramrod was, or should be, placed—but these were even more rare, and delivered more quietly, shoulders hunched, head down.

  Manuel “Ramrod” Becker made his way from his cube, past the other small, close-packed cubes that contained his staff and his colleagues, and to the elevator. He punched in the number for the top floor, the tenth, the Executive Branch, traditionally referred to as the Twelfth Floor for reasons Becker knew well and cared about not in
the least.

  When the elevator doors opened, he took himself to the office of Ms. Camellia Morgan. Before reaching Morgan, however, he had to face the obstacle of her secretary, Florencia Trujillo. Three facts are worth mentioning with respect to Florencia: She was roughly the same age as her boss—that is, early fifties—she was the only individual in the Foundation, including her boss, who was not intimidated by Becker; and Becker couldn’t care less about either of these circumstances.

  “Good day, Florencia. I would like to see Ms. Morgan, if she’s free.”

  “I will inquire, Mr. Becker.”

  Trujillo rose—she preferred to ask in person with someone waiting, rather than permit half of her conversation to be overheard—and vanished into the bowels of the Executive Branch. Becker rarely needed to wait for anything, but when he did he stood stock still, hands at his sides, eyes straight ahead, giving the impression that he would continue in that attitude for five minutes, five days, or five years, whatever it took.

  It took under a minute. Trujillo returned, resumed her seat, folded her hands, and said, “Ms. Morgan will see you.”

  “Thank you, Florencia.”

  He went back to the big office. Morgan pointed to a chair; he sat.

  “What is it, Mr. Becker?”

  “Something of a development in the Mystici murders.”

  “Go on.”

  “My lead investigator pointed out a few things. First, all four killings have been in America—in the continental United States, in fact. Yet, most of the Mystici are concentrated in Western and Northern Europe.”

  “Go on.”

  “Maybe it’s a vigilante starting there, planning to move on. But maybe not. Second, he’s used a different form of attack with each killing. First was a time-stop permitting an attack with a firearm—”

  “Americans,” said Morgan.

  “The second was a very subtle manipulation that stopped the heart. The third was freezing water in a swimming pool. The fourth was the infliction or simulation of a disease that fills the body with nitrogen bubbles.”

  Morgan frowned. “Why so different? If he can stop time and shoot someone, then why not just do that?”

  “Exactly. Third, the attacks on our people, both of them, were work for hire, amateurs, for not much money. No magic used at all.”