The three got out. A driver was waiting in the van, wearing a hat over a full head of hair, who could equally well have been male or female from the brief glimpse they were able to get. Before they had even walked around to the rear doors, the cabbie had deposited Rebecca's bags and was on his way. Interestingly, the stranger hadn't paid him anything, Cade noted. The stranger opened one of the van's rear doors, picked up the suitcase, and ushered the other two in. Cade took the travel bag. The interior had seats on both sides and across the front, and was lit by lights in the corners. Cade and Rebecca settled down facing each other across the rear end. The stranger moved past them to sit looking back. He banged his hand a couple of times on the wall behind him, and the van moved off.
Cade quickly lost track of the turns, so that by the time he felt the van accelerating back onto what felt like the Interstate again, he was unable to tell whether they were still going south or had about-turned. As time wore on he made sporadic attempts to start some kind of conversation with the stranger, but the responses were brief and noncommittal, except to say that they could call him "Len" and it was okay for Cade to call Lou Zinner's pilot and say he had been delayed. Cade was mildly surprised that he had been allowed to keep his phone, and concluded that he wasn't some kind of prisoner. Hence, if this dragged on past the pilot's deadline for returning, he didn't think he would have much difficulty getting a regular flight back. Maybe on principle he should ask CounterAction to cover the fare.
A little under two hours passed. Since the people they were going to meet hadn't known how they would be traveling, it made sense that the initial rendezvous should have been set in a regional center like Atlanta. There was no reason why the ultimate destination should be conveniently close, of course. But it puzzled Cade that Len, and presumably those he represented, seemed unconcerned about the possibility of police checks on a journey of this length. The most likely explanation he could think of was that in their own territory they had the highways staked out and were able to pass warnings of roadblocks in time for them to be avoided.
Eventually, the van's motions signaled that they were leaving a highway. A few minutes of intermittent turns and stops followed before it halted, and the engine died. Len got out, turning to retrieve the bags. Cade and Rebecca followed, stretching cramped legs and flexing arms, to find themselves outside the rear of a typical midrange motel.
Len led them to room 127 and rapped on the door. It was opened by a petite woman in a thin, knitted pattern sweater, loose slacks, and lightweight hiking boots. She had wiry hair that wavered between dark blond and burnt auburn, styled short and easy to manage, sharply defined features that couldn't be called "cute," yet were attractive in their own in-depth kind of way, and dark, almost black eyes that in moments gave the impression of never being still, darting over the arrivals and already seeming to have gleaned all the information there was to see. The eyes came to rest on Cade and softened into mischievous liquid pools at the astonishment on his face.
"So hi," she greeted. "I guess, for once, I get a turn with the surprises. It's been a long time."
It was Marie.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT WAS SO SUDDEN AND UNEXPECTED that Cade found himself at a loss for anything to say that wouldn't have seemed inane. For several seconds, all he could do was stare. While he was still getting over his surprise, Marie brought them all inside. She had doubtless come from a hideout or safe house somewhere in the area to make the initial contact. Cade and Rebecca wouldn't expect to have been taken straight there.
It was a standard motel room with a pair of double beds. A woman's topcoat was thrown on one of them; a couple of magazines lay on the other, which was rumpled, as if Marie had been reading while she waited. Coffee was brewed in the pot provided, and some deli sandwiches, chips, and soft drinks laid out alongside it. Len threw his coat on top of Marie's and handed her a phone that he had been carrying, which Cade saw was a video type. Now he realized why Marie hadn't been surprised on seeing him. Len had sent back an image, even before he accosted Cade in Atlanta.
Marie positioned the phone on a corner table to take the room in its viewing angle and attached a speaker extension. Evidently, the proceedings were to be monitored remotely. Cade wondered how normal it was for any face-to-face contact to be permitted at all in a first meeting. It seemed dangerous. Had they relaxed their usual precautions, perhaps because Marie had vouched for him?
"We need you sitting here, Rebecca," Marie said, waving to indicate the nearest of the two beds. "You can munch while we talk." Rebecca moved the coats aside and sat down. "Roland, I'm going to have to ask you to take a walk outside with Len," Marie said. "You'll get to talk later. I'm sure I don't have to explain." Cade nodded, shrugged in a way that said it was okay, selected a sandwich to take with the coffee cup he was holding, and moved to the door. Just before Len opened it, Rebecca got up again, went into the bathroom, and came back out with a towel, which she spread by her on the bed to put her sandwich plate on. "Okay? Let's get started," Cade heard Marie say as Len closed the door behind them, hanging the "Do Not Disturb" sign outside.
He sipped his coffee and stood, looking around. The van was gone—or at least, moved from the slot it had been in. Extending away beyond the fence were the trappings of what could have been the outskirts of virtually any city. In the distance, however, in a direction that Cade judged to be the west or south from the position of the sun, stood a high, flat-topped mountain, forming one side of a valley. He had noticed that the room's call terminal carried the area code 423. Offhand, he didn't know where that was. Two hours driving from Atlanta? . . . But then, he didn't know if all of that had been in the same direction.
"Kestrel suggested we take a walk," Len said. "Let's walk."
"Kestrel?" Cade grinned. "Is that what you call her these days?" Len grunted, seemingly irked at having given away more than necessary. They moved to the end of the block and stood chewing sandwiches and finishing their coffees. Then they crossed to a dumpster standing on a corner of the parking lot to dispose of the cups. Vehicles were parked here and there. It was early yet for the evening arrivals to begin showing up. Cade saw license plates from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, one from Florida, another, Indiana. It didn't really tell him much. They strolled back to the room. The sign was still hanging outside the door. They made another circuit of the block. When they came back, the sign had gone. Len knocked, and Marie let them back in.
Now it was Cade's turn to talk to the camera and answer questions. Len stayed, while Rebecca left with Marie. There were no surprises. Cade told his story as it had happened, omitting details of precisely who had initiated the contact into CounterAction for him, because he wasn't asked. The question that caused him the most difficulty was regarding his motivation: Why had he done it? Why had he gotten involved? He couldn't say it was to help with their cause—truth was, he had never given much thought to it. His own life was pretty comfortable, thanks to no one else, because he had made it that way. It was up to others to worry about what he considered to be their problems. He didn't feel that whoever he was talking to would appreciate a discourse on personal philosophies of that nature, however.
"Julia—the person I'm with now. It seemed important to her," he said. "Apparently, they were close friends back in college. . . . I guess I just wanted to do what I could. I didn't have any thought then of getting involved." He gestured to indicate the room he was in. "Not like this." Which was true; but somehow not enough. Cade didn't find it satisfying.
"There was nothing of a more . . . `personal' nature, maybe?" the voice from the phone speaker queried.
Cade sat back, jolted by the question. "No. . . ." But he wasn't sure. He realized how impossible this would have been had Marie remained present.
There was a pause. Then the voice on the phone said, "Very well." Evidently, Cade had passed muster; the subject was closed. So was that what he had been brought all this way for? It needled him.
"Well, I'm glad that you
're satisfied," he said. It was one of those rare times when he was unable to keep an edge of sarcasm out of his voice. "My plane back to LA will have left already. I'm going to have to get some kind of a regular connection instead from here, wherever this is—unless you've got rules that say we have to go on another mystery tour first. You realize that you've cost me my whole evening."
The person who the voice belonged to seemed unimpressed. "There are people out there right now for whom it's costing their homes, their families, their lives," he replied coolly.
The remark hit Cade as disconcertingly as it came unexpectedly. He sat back on the bed, finding himself too troubled and confused to respond. He had never thought of it that way. Somehow, the thought of putting in an expense claim didn't feel like such a good idea.
Marie and Rebecca came back. Len held a muted conversation over the phone. It seemed that business was concluded for the moment. He would need to go back to confer, he announced. Rebecca would probably be moved to another location later that night and arrangements made to send Cade home. In the meantime they were to remain here. Marie would keep them company. Len collected his coat off the bed. When he opened the door, the van had magically reappeared. As he was leaving, Marie caught Cade's sleeve, and drew close to keep her words private. "We have to take care of business first," she murmured. "Maybe we'll be able to talk a little later. There must be lots. It's been a long time." Cade nodded.
While Marie rinsed out the coffee pot and prepared another brew, Rebecca lay back along the bed they had been using and stared at the ceiling. Cade paced disconsolately to the door and back several times, then settled down on the other and picked up one of the magazines still lying there. An ad at the bottom of the page it was opened at was for a restaurant called the Chattanooga Chew Chew. Its phone number had the area code 423. Well, that answered one question, anyway, he told himself.
* * *?
The miniature locator that ISS operative "Ruby," currently operating under the field name Rebecca, had attached beneath the collar of Len's jacket while it lay on the bed updated its position from satellite fixes every five seconds and had connected with the national security network via booster relays covering the area. The computers at ISS Regional Command in Atlanta had found voiceprint matches with two samples from previously tapped recordings, both established from interrogation leads as belonging to members of the Scorpion cell. The male was the operative known as "Len"; the female went as "Kestrel."
For ten minutes, the plot from the locator traced a route northwest of Chattanooga to coordinates shown on a large-scale map as pinpointing one of a number of mobile homes situated in a wooded area just over the Tennessee River. Conversation picked up later inside the house identified the Scorpion member, believed to be cell leader, known as "Olsen," and a female voice not on file. Then, after a further fifteen minutes, another male voice was detected. Within seconds, the analyzer monitor in Atlanta started beeping and flashing a box with the caption PRIORITY. An operator transferred spectra samples to an auxiliary screen and ran a full Fourier and time series comparison. He picked up a red phone that connected directly to the section supervisor.
"Bingo!" he reported. "It's him, Reyvek. We've found the defector."
A Status Report, Operations Plan, and Request for Action Approval were flashed to Washington within eighteen minutes. Before a half-hour was up, the response came back: GO.
Choppers from a base in the mountains between Chattanooga and Nashville, experimentally fitted with quiet-running Hyadean ducted fans in place of conventional rotors, landed strike teams a mile from the target in opposite directions along the north bank of the river. Their orders were to identify and take out the designated Subject, along with all other opposition on sight. When that objective was confirmed, a second unit would go in to relieve operative Ruby in the motel on the south side of the city, and eliminate the two remaining hostiles there.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CADE LAY PROPPED AGAINST the headboard and watched as Marie poured two coffees. She added some creamer and a sachet of sugar to his, left hers black, and brought them over. Rebecca was in the bathroom, and from the time that had passed, could conceivably have fallen asleep there. Cade took the cup that Marie offered. She sat down with her own at the foot of the bed and regarded him over the rim as she took a sip. He returned the look evenly for a moment, saw that she was simply being open, inviting things to take any turn from here, and let his face soften.
" `Mole Woman'! What ever made you remember that? I thought you'd be a million years past any sentimental stuff by now—whatever used to be there, anyway."
"They wanted something personal. You see, you never could get it into your head that I had a side like that. You only saw this cold intellectual . . . and you invented most of that yourself."
"Oh, come on."
"You still can't see it?"
Cade gestured at her. "Look at you, for Christ's sake."
"So there's a side that wants to do something about things I take seriously, too. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It's just as well some people do. . . . Besides, why just talk about me. What's this `red coal' thing I'm hearing about all of a sudden?" Her eyes flickered over him. "Trying to tell me something, Roland?"
Cade made an exaggerated show of sighing at the ceiling, missing the impish twist of her mouth. "Oh, we're not about to go off into some Freudian excursion are we? The guy I was talking to threw the question across a table, and that was what I came up with. It's not as if there's a huge list of alternatives."
"Oh, I don't know. You could have picked . . ." Marie thought for a few seconds. "Let's see, there's `red cola,' `real cod.' Then you've got `old acre' or `old care.' Does `earl doc' work?" She frowned. "Yes, it does, doesn't it?"
"Okay, okay." Cade cocked a complimentary eyebrow. "You're still as quick, I see." Marie showed an empty palm and made a face that said "if you say so." But she wasn't about to drop it. "So why did you come here?" she said.
Cade let his head fall back against the headboard. "Why is everyone around here trying to psychoanalyze me? Look, it wasn't me that wanted to come here. I just planned on coming as far as Atlanta to make sure she was collected okay. The rest was your people's idea. I didn't get a lot of say in it. They went through all this while you were out of the room. Why not ask them when you get back, eh?"
Marie stared at him for a moment or two longer, then nodded. She took another sip from her cup. "So is life still being kind to you?" she asked.
Now Cade felt on familiar ground. He answered automatically. "It is, because I let it." Despite the qualms that had assailed him earlier, he couldn't resist being provocative. "You know how I am. I mind my own business. If other people want to make problems for themselves, that's their right, I guess."
"Oh, how can you blame people for what's happening to them? Ordinary, decent people, I mean. They work hard, believe what they're told. They're being sold out."
Cade raised his chin. They were at it again, already. It seemed that the amnesty had been short-lived. "So who are you blaming, the Hyadeans? Well, some of them happen to be friends of mine, and they can be pretty ordinary and decent, too, believe it or not."
"But that's the whole point! It's not a simplistic `them' or `us' situation. The power on both sides is in collusion. It's like, oh . . . when the Romans used to provide palaces and protection to the local chiefs for keeping the natives in line and the taxes coming in. This whole regime that they've set up in Washington is getting to be just like one of those puppet—" The room's phone units sounded an incoming call. Cade picked up the handset from the bedside stand, pressed the "2" button to select audio only, and offered the phone to Marie. "Dictatorships you used to hear about," she completed as she took it. The latch of the bathroom door clicked barely audibly.
A look of alarm seized Marie's face suddenly. As Cade started to mouth a question, she touched "3" to activate the screen and speaker phone. Sounds poured forth of voices shouting indistinctly, some s
eeming to be barking commands, others yelling warnings; confused scuffling and banging; then a torrent of what could only be gunfire.
"What in hell—" Cade began, swinging his legs down off the bed.
Len's face filled the screen, twisted by fear and desperation. "Kes, get out! It's a bust! They're already coming in here! We've got—" Half his head erupted in an explosion of flesh and gore. He vanished to be replaced by a brief image of a black-hooded figure holding a gun in one hand and gesturing to somebody with the other, then disappearing off-screen.
"Jesus Christ!" Cade cried.
"State Security. Freeze right there!" Cade looked around at where the voice had come from. Rebecca had come out of the bathroom, clasping an automatic in a two-handed grip. He gaped, paralyzed. But she made the mistake of swinging the weapon from him to Marie and back again to cover both of them. As the muzzle moved away, Marie swept her arm up, throwing the contents of her coffee cup into Rebecca's face, then almost in the same movement bunched herself to go in low under it, crashing her shoulder into Rebecca's midriff with her full weight and momentum behind it. The action was instant, reflexive—before Cade had even tuned in to what was happening. The sound of an explosion followed by more shooting came from the phone's speaker.
The bullet went into the wall a foot away from Cade. Rebecca was hurled backward, going down and cracking her head on the drawer unit by the wall, which had the snack leftovers on top. Marie pulled Rebecca's head up by the hair, thudded it back against the floor, then used her knee to pin the arm holding the gun and twisted it from Rebecca's grasp. Rebecca made a V with the fingers of one hand and jabbed upward viciously, aiming at Marie's eyes, but Marie deflected it, then struck sideways at Rebecca's head with the gun, left then right, and then again—pure survival instinct reacting to lethal danger. Cade looked on, horrified, as blood welled from a gash on Rebecca's temple and ran down her face, mingling with the coffee that Marie had thrown. Marie stood up, breathing shakily. But Rebecca was still not out, nor was she finished. She sat up and lunged for the gun, but was too groggy to judge the distance. Marie shot her twice in the center of the forehead.
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