Cowboy Angels

by Paul McAuley

  The house he was looking for was a modern design of interlocking cubes of white concrete and glass set on top of a ridge and partly cantilevered over a steep drop. As he drove past, Stone saw a black late-model sedan with tinted windows parked just inside the steel-bar gate. After the next bend, he pulled off the road, parked amongst pine trees, and slipped through a strip of rocky woods to the chain-link fence at the rear of the property. A dog barked somewhere far off in the night. The uncurtained windows of the house dropped rectangles of light over the garden and the short, steep drive. Stone could see that someone was sitting in the driver’s seat of the sedan, face laid sideways on the steering wheel as if they’d fallen asleep.

  Stone checked the fence for alarm wires and sensors, swung over it, and crept through a Japanese garden of bamboos and moss, moving from shadow to shadow. The irrigation system had recently been on. The cool air smelled of wet earth and wet vegetation.

  The man slumped inside the sedan didn’t stir when Stone tapped the window with the muzzle of the pistol. He opened the door and saw that the man had been shot at close range by a small-calibre weapon that had left a neat hole above his ear. It had happened very recently. The man’s skin still held some warmth and the worm of blood that slanted across his cheek to his chin had not yet dried.

  Standing in the yellow light that dropped from the house’s windows, Stone felt as exposed as a bug in a jar. He sprinted around the side of the house, found a sliding glass door that stood half-open. When he stepped through, leading with the pistol, he nearly tripped over the body of a woman sprawled just inside. She had been shot with a small-calibre weapon too, and wore an empty shoulder holster under the jacket of her black pants suit. Stone found a cell phone in one of her pockets and a little flashlight and a set of handcuffs in the other, but if she had been carrying any ID it had been taken with her gun.

  He stood in the shadows by the door, scoping out the dark, sparely furnished living room, listening to small noises elsewhere in the house. He eased off his boots and in white socks walked carefully across the living room into the hallway beyond. A room to the left had been made over into an office. Books lined one wall, a mix of glossy art-photograph albums, technical works on quantum theory and computing and system engineering, a small run of self-help and management theory manuals. The desk was a wide curve of laminated ply fitted between the angle of two walls, empty except for a state-of-the-art computer and a glass case in which a big tarantula spider sat motionless on a litter of bark and dead leaves. The top drawer of a filing cabinet had been pulled out and papers were scattered underneath.

  The small noises were coming from a room at the far end of the hallway. The door was open and light beyond threw a faint moving shadow on the wall opposite. Stone flattened beside the door, risked a quick peek inside, saw a suitcase open on a platform bed, saw a woman in jeans and a grey T-shirt rummaging in a closet. When Stone stepped into the room, Eileen Barrie turned toward him, clasping a folded sweater to herself, her stare rising from his pistol to his face.

  3

  As Stone walked her out of the house at gunpoint, Eileen Barrie told him that she’d shot the man and the woman because they’d broken into her property and meant her harm. Stone asked her why she hadn’t called the police and she said that she’d panicked, thought that the police might get the wrong idea.

  ‘I expect they would,’ Stone said, ‘because no housebreaker would leave his car in plain sight. It’s obvious that those two were bodyguards, or were keeping you under some kind of house arrest.’

  Eileen Barrie said he could think what he liked. She had the same square, pugnacious face, framed by glossy black shoulder-length hair parted with surgical precision down the centre of her scalp, that he remembered from the photographs David Welch had shown him. She’d put on a leather jacket as thin and supple and fine-grained as baby’s skin, and was carrying an attaché case full of papers and computer disks. She claimed that it was information about Operation GYPSY that she would be willing to hand over to the Company in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

  Stone shorted the starter solenoid of the stolen Ford with a wire he’d ripped from the dash radio. The engine caught with a roar that seemed loud enough to wake everyone for a mile around. He shut the hood and told Eileen Barrie she was going to drive; warned her to calm down and keep to the speed limit when she swerved out onto the road in a spray of dirt and pine needles. The road climbed past big houses that stood further and further back until at last all that could be seen of them were high stone walls or drives wandering away into the woods, and then there were only trees. Stone kept quiet, letting her stew, letting her imagination work on her confidence. She drove with her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel and her gaze fixed straight ahead, didn’t question Stone when at last he told her to turn off the road and park at a picnic area.

  They walked past tables and barbecue pits into the trees beyond. Stone was carrying the Macy’s bag, lighting the way with the flashlight he’d found in one of the dead woman’s pockets. A short flight of stone steps led down to a paved viewing area that looked across a dark, narrow valley to a rock ridge that gleamed pale and bare in the light of a half-moon hung behind runners of thin cloud. Eileen Barrie sat at one end of a stone bench and Stone sat at the other, aiming his pistol and flashlight at her face. The bag sat between them.

  ‘Let’s talk about what you were doing when I found you,’ Stone said. ‘You’d shot your guards, you’d stuffed an attaché case full of valuable papers and computer disks, and you were packing a suitcase. Any reasonable person would have to think that you were getting ready to make a run for it, Dr Barrie.’

  ‘Who are you working for, Mr Stone? Perhaps you have some ID you could show me.’

  ‘I used to work for the Company, just like you. Right now, I’m working for myself. Did Tom Waverly tell you to make a run for it, or was it your own idea?’

  Eileen Barrie showed no reaction when Stone mentioned Tom’s name. She was calm, cool, and controlled, trying hard to show that she wasn’t scared and doing a pretty good job. Stone wondered how someone who lived in the desert could stay so pale. Perhaps she only went out at night, spent the days working in some windowless maximum-security sub-basement.

  ‘I should have figured it out as soon as Tom told me what he’d stolen,’ he said. ‘I should have known that he would have had inside help, someone he could trust. Someone like you, Dr Barrie. How did he get in touch with you while those two agents were dogging your every move? Was it the old wrong-number trick?’

  ‘Why would he call me?’

  ‘I used to work with Tom. I was persuaded to come out of retirement because he’d landed himself in a good deal of trouble. He’d stolen something, he was on the run from the people who wanted it back, he was moving from sheaf to sheaf, and he was killing your doppels wherever he could.’

  That got her attention. After a moment, she said, ‘If he was doing ... what you claim he was doing, why haven’t I heard about it?’

  ‘When I found Tom, he was in a pretty desperate state. Matter of fact, he went ahead and killed himself, Dr Barrie. He shot himself dead. He put a gun in his mouth and blew his brains out, right in front of me. The funny thing is, he was already dying of radiation poisoning. Would you know anything about that?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘You don’t believe me because you know Tom is here, in Alamogordo. He phoned you a little while ago, didn’t he? That’s why you killed your guards, that’s why you were packing, that’s why you think my story is crazy. But here’s the twist. A few days after Tom killed himself, I ran into him again. The very same man, only not quite so desperate-looking, and healthy as a horse. I’ve been travelling with him ever since. You’re a smart woman, Dr Barrie, so I’m sure you can tell me how all this is possible.’

  ‘It’s an amusing story, Mr Stone, but not very believable.’

  ‘I had a lot of trouble believing it myself until tonight. I thought the guy wh
o blew out his brains in front of me was a doppel, or that it had all been some kind of stagecraft. But then I saw what the thing Tom stole, he calls it a time key, could do to a Turing gate.’

  ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You want to know what I’m talking about, it’s right in here,’ Stone said, resting his hand on the bag that sat between them. ‘Why don’t you take a look for yourself?’

  ‘Why don’t you show it to me?’

  Stone gave the bag a hefty shove. It skidded about a foot along the bench and tipped on its side, spilling the sleeve of his jacket. Eileen Barrie jumped, just a little. Stone said, ‘It made a connection with you, didn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Tom told me that it had a mind of its own. He told me the people who worked on it found that out the hard way. It’s wrapped in that jacket. Why don’t you take it out for me?’

  Eileen Barrie didn’t move.

  ‘All you have to do is switch it on,’ Stone said. ‘If you can do that, it’ll do a number on me. It’ll more or less knock me out. You’ll be able to take this pistol from me and shoot me in the head, like you did your two guards.’

  She still didn’t move.

  Stone raised the .38. ‘How about I put it another way? Take the device out of the bag right now, or I swear I’ll put a bullet somewhere that’ll seriously inconvenience you.’

  ‘You’re being insulting, Mr Stone,’ Eileen Barrie said, with enough venom in her voice to kill half the population of Alamogordo.

  ‘You’d do it in a moment if you could,’ Stone said. ‘You’d just love to reach in there, switch it on, and watch me do a funny dance to its tune. But you can’t, because you know it likes you about as much as it likes me. You know it’ll fuck you up too. Why did you and Tom steal it from GYPSY?’

  ‘You seem to think you know everything, Mr Stone. Perhaps you could tell me what this has to do with me.’

  ‘I know about half of everything, Dr Barrie, if that. I do know that you’re one of GYPSY’s key workers. The key worker, according to Tom. You’re part of GYPSY’s cover, the research programme into portable Turing gates, but you’re also part of the black op hidden behind the cover story, and so is Tom. That’s what he’s been doing ever since he faked his death and dropped out of sight three years ago. That, and cooking up a plan with you to steal the time key. Don’t waste my time by trying to deny it, Dr Barrie. One way or another, you’re going to tell me everything you know.’

  ‘I’m willing to talk to the proper authorities. Not to a hoodlum who has kidnapped me.’

  Stone raised and fired the .38, knocking a fist-sized chunk out of the fieldstone wall behind Eileen Barrie. She jumped to her feet as the hard flat sound of the shot rolled across the dark valley. Dust flung into the air defined the beam of the flashlight.

  ‘All right,’ she said after a moment, staring at the pistol centred on her face. ‘All right.’

  ‘Sit down, Dr Barrie.’

  She did as she was told. Her hands were shaking as she brushed dust from her leather jacket.

  ‘Let’s start over,’ Stone said. ‘The two people you killed weren’t intruders. They were guards.’

  Eileen Barrie nodded.

  ‘The people in charge of GYPSY have put you under guard ever since Tom Waverly stole the time key.’

  ‘Ever since he vanished, yes.’

  ‘Were you under house arrest, or was it for your protection?’

  ‘I was told that it was for my protection.’

  ‘When are they due to be relieved? Tell the truth, Dr Barrie. I’ll know if you’re lying.’

  ‘Eight o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Then we have plenty of time to get things straight. Did you kill your guards because Tom Waverly contacted you?’

  ‘What can you offer me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘To begin with, I need a guarantee that I won’t be prosecuted, and that my name will not be used in any proceedings the Company might bring against anyone else.’

  ‘I’m not here to make any kind of deal with you. I’m here to find out everything you know about GYPSY. I need the names of the people you’re working for. I need to know where to find them. I need to know what they are planning to do.’

  ‘I’ll only make a full disclosure in exchange for a guarantee of immunity.’

  Stone raised the .38 again. ‘You’ll make it to me. Right here, right now.’

  ‘And then you’ll let me go?’

  ‘I’ll hand you over to the Company. I’m sure they’ll want to know everything you can tell them about GYPSY. I’m sure you’ll be able to cut a deal with them.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Just like that, huh? What guarantees can you give me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How will I know you’re telling the truth?’

  ‘You have made it clear that I have no choice in the matter, Mr Stone.’

  Stone realised then what he’d walked in on, why she’d killed the bodyguards, why she’d decided to bail. He said, ‘I guess it helps that you’ve already decided to run out on Tom Waverly.’

  She hesitated, then gave a tight little nod.

  ‘He talked to you tonight. What did he say?’

  ‘I have a cell phone that no one in GYPSY knows about. He sent me a text message an hour ago. I knew at once something had gone wrong because he was not supposed to be in this sheaf and we weren’t supposed to contact each other until it was all over. He sent me a telephone number and asked me to call it at once. We talked. He told me that he’d lost the time key, but he wouldn’t explain how. He said that I wasn’t in any danger and he had a backup plan. I was to go to work tomorrow as if nothing had happened, and download certain files.’

  ‘About GYPSY.’

  ‘About the operation inside Operation GYPSY. He said that he would intercept me on my way home and kill my guards. We’d go into hiding, and we’d offer the files to the Company in exchange for an exemption from prosecution.’

  ‘But you already had those files, didn’t you? You had your own backup plan all along. And after he contacted you, you decided to make a run for it.’

  ‘I couldn’t trust him, Mr Stone. He sounded . . . agitated. Agitated, drunk, and not at all like the man I knew. I decided that his so-called plan was too risky.’

  ‘So you decided to betray him before he could betray you.’

  ‘I decided to take action of my own,’ Eileen Barrie said primly.

  ‘But you did trust him, once upon a time. You helped him to steal the time key.’

  ‘That’s what Tom calls it. I prefer a simpler, less specific term: the device.’

  ‘Why did you help him?’

  ‘It was my idea, Mr Stone, not his. I wanted to put an end to GYPSY. I found that I no longer agreed with its aims.’

  ‘That’s the same bullshit Tom fed me. He also told me that he couldn’t take it to the Company because he’d been on the run for three years, he’d done too many bad things, and no one would believe him. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But you’re a respectable scientist, Dr Barrie. If you really wanted to put a stop to GYPSY, you could have gone straight to the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence. You could have blown the whistle any time. But you didn’t, did you? So why did you and Tom steal the time key?’

  Eileen Barrie looked past Stone for a moment, then said, ‘Money.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘You and Tom stole the time key because you wanted money?’

  ‘We wanted a life together. We wanted out of GYPSY. We needed a good deal of money to accomplish those aims.’

  Stone made a connection he should have made a long time ago. ‘You were lovers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you cooked up a scheme to steal the time key and blackmail the people who run GYPSY for its return.’

  ‘Tom took care of the blackmail. I gav
e him the information he needed to steal the device. He took it and went into hiding, and a third party was going to make the arrangements for the exchange.’

  ‘A third party by the name of Freddy Layne.’

  ‘I’m unfamiliar with the name,’ Eileen Barrie said, as unblinking as an owl in the beam of the flashlight.

  ‘Freddy Layne was Tom’s business partner in another sheaf. Why didn’t you go with Tom?’

  ‘We agreed that it would be best if I stayed behind. That way they wouldn’t know who had stolen it.’

  ‘But they suspected you had something to do with it, didn’t they? That’s why you were under guard.’

  Eileen Barrie didn’t deny it.

  Stone said, ‘I think you stayed behind because if things went wrong it would be Tom and not you who’d take the fall.’

  She didn’t deny that, either.

  ‘You’re quite a piece of work, Dr Barrie.’

  ‘After the device went missing, I was interrogated and I was put under guard, but so was everyone who had access to it. They knew Tom had something to do with it because he had disappeared, but they didn’t know about us. About our . . . connection. And I was quite sure that, if he was caught, Tom would not tell them about me. He loved me, you see.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, Dr Barrie. If you and Tom were indulging in extracurricular activity, you can bet your colleagues in GYPSY knew about it. They didn’t do anything to you because they were using you as bait. They were waiting for you to make a move. Waiting for Tom to get in touch.’

  She thought about that for a moment. ‘He wasn’t supposed to get in touch with me. I didn’t even know where he went after we liberated the device. He was supposed to make all the arrangements for the exchange, and then I was going to join him.’

  ‘But he turned up here instead. He told you that he’d lost the time key, but he had this nifty, brand-new plan, and he needed your help. You didn’t like it, so you decided to make a run for it before he found you. When did he steal the time key, by the way?’

  ‘A week ago.’ Eileen Barrie hesitated, then said, ‘Tom told me that he has been hiding out for three weeks. He told me that he had used the time key to travel two weeks into his past. Is that true?’