Borderless (An Analog Novel Book 2)

by Eliot Peper

  And then Sean came home, interrupting her orchestra of diversion. She killed her feed, focused on her senses. Not wanting to risk a light, she had been waiting in utter darkness. The air in the pantry was thick with cumin and allspice. She heard the front door open and close and tried to match the muffled footsteps to her mental map of the house.

  Sean was talking to someone about a congressional bill that would be killed in committee. Did he have a guest? That might pose a problem for Diana. No. Only one set of footsteps. He must be talking to someone via feed.

  The light in the kitchen came on, the glow coming under the pantry door the only illumination in the cramped space. The clickity-clack padding of a dog’s paws on tile signaled the halting arrival of Mr. Snufflebunch, Sean’s doddering old Irish wolfhound, whom Diana had won over with treats and affection during her clandestine entry earlier that evening. Sean ended his call.

  “Ooo, who’s a good boy?” he cooed to the dog. “Yeah, you are, you big old beast. Want a piece of cheese? Only if you’ve been good. Oh yeah? Want it? Okay, okay. Let me put down these groceries, and I’ll hook you up with some top-shelf gruyère.”

  She heard the fridge door open and close, followed by some banging around in the kitchen.

  “Here you go, buddy,” said Sean through a mouthful of his own. “That’s it. Yummy, right? Your favorite. I wish my dinner could be as delicious as yours. But Doc’s orders say nothing but smoothies. You’d hate ’em, believe me.”

  Mr. Snufflebunch panted happily. Sean busied himself preparing dinner, or that’s what Diana guessed from the alternating sounds of the sink and a knife thwacking into a cutting board.

  Diana had once taken a surfing lesson during R&R after an op in Jakarta. She remembered how it had felt to get tossed around underwater, raked across reefs, and generally beaten senseless by the ocean. At least that was offset by the heady rush of actually riding a wave, flying along the turquoise face in perfect symmetry with nature. But the most memorable part of the experience was how it felt right before you dropped into a wave. Paddling as fast as you could to match its speed, feeling it rise beneath you from behind, the visceral flash of your insignificance in the face of the ocean’s strength, the moment when you had no choice but to commit.

  There was a moment like that in every operation, when you could feel the momentum building and second thoughts urged hesitation, but you had to push through, drop in, and catch the wave.

  She opened the pantry door and stepped out into the kitchen.

  “What’s up, Sean?” she said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  Sean jerked around. He had been facing the far counter under the windows that looked out onto the backyard of his McLean estate. A kitchen island separated them, and the room was appointed with pristine stainless-steel appliances that appeared to get little actual use. A large blender sat next to the cutting board, two-thirds full of spinach and fruit.

  Sean’s bright-green eyes blinked rapidly. With his bulky build, thick red beard, and shocked expression, he looked like a hoodwinked giant. His tie hung loose, and the top few buttons of his fruit juice–splattered shirt were open. A large chef’s knife hung limply from his right hand, and Diana saw that he had been hacking the husk off a coconut, which had rolled over on its side on the cutting board.

  While his master tried to get his bearings, Mr. Snufflebunch tottered over to Diana, tail wagging, tongue lolling, nose twitching in the hope of another offering. Diana crouched and ruffled his ears.

  “Hey there, handsome,” she said. “Such a good doggie.”

  Mr. Snufflebunch nuzzled her face, and she got a whiff of gruyère.

  Her comfortable familiarity with his dog seemed to throw Sean even more off balance.

  “Who—”

  “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already,” she said with a casual matter-of-factness that belied her pounding heart. “So don’t do anything silly like calling the police.”

  Sean looked taken aback. She could see the gears turning in his head, the realization dawn that she very well might be there to kill him and that he should have been doing something, anything, like using his feed to call the police. Working with civilians always reminded her of what it took to be a professional. Good training made everyone else’s reactions in crisis situations look like slow motion. Sean had been smart to send Dag to commando camp in Namibia all those years ago. In the messy world of geopolitical lobbying, you needed somebody who could handle the dirty work.

  “What—”

  “Hi,” she said, smiling brightly. “I’m Diana. We’ve never met in person before, but you know who I am. I’ve helped out Apex over the years, and you were generous enough to commission me on this new project. Always good to put a face to a name, right?”

  “Look, Diana—”

  “Now don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I really appreciate you thinking of me. Everyone loves a loyal customer. I’m honored. Humbled, even.”

  This time he just swallowed.

  “I just have a few questions. Barely questions at all really, clarifications.”

  She shrugged.

  “Like, for example, why are you using Leviathan Partners and Hoffman and Associates to pretend that you’re not the one hiring me? And for that matter, what is the point of having me shadow Commonwealth execs?”

  “I—”

  “And don’t feed me some bullshit about how Apex is looking for ‘differentiated market intelligence.’ We’re past the buzzword cover-story phase. It’s time to get real. You’re a lobbyist. That means you represent your clients’ interests. I don’t believe for a second that you’re commissioning this operation on your own account. So who’s the client?”

  “You’re angry,” said Sean. “I get it. I didn’t want to do it this way either.”

  “I get it too,” she said. “You need to put up a good fight for client privilege. You don’t want to throw them under the bus. Very commendable.” She gave him a double thumbs-up. “Now this may seem like a bit of a tangent, but I was very sorry to see the evidence of recurrence in your latest oncology report. Nasty thing, cancer. Especially when it comes back to haunt you after remission. I’m with you on the diet regimen. Once the docs have thrown everything they’ve got at it, sometimes you just need to ride the damn thing out. Better to enjoy whatever time you’ve got left than turn yourself into a medical experiment.” She pointed at him and then at her own chest. “You and me? We’re kindred spirits. I have an intuition for these things. We play the greatest game there is.” She gestured to take in all of DC. “Once you get a taste, there’s nothing else like it. So I’m guessing you would really prefer that your partners at Apex and the clients you so loyally serve don’t find out that you’re terminal. Cuz, let’s be honest, nobody wants a dead man representing them.”

  All the color drained from Sean’s face, and he seemed to shrink into himself.

  “I don’t know what they want,” he said quietly. “They just had me hire you anonymously and feed you their instructions.”

  “Who, exactly?” Her tone was sickly sweet.

  He shook his head.

  Diana vaulted her hips up onto the kitchen island, slid across the smooth surface, and landed immediately in front of Sean. He flinched, bringing up the chef’s knife instinctually. Anticipating the move, she brought her right hand up from below to deflect the point, grabbed his wrist with her left hand, sidestepped past his elbow, twisted his wrist with her until the knife popped out of his grip, and caught the handle as it fell. Then she shoved him back against the counter, spun, and put all her weight and strength behind an overhand chop.

  The coconut split in half with a sharp crack. Juice poured off the counter onto the tile floor, and bits of husk and thick white meat flew everywhere. She left the knife quivering in the wooden cutting board.

  Standing on her tiptoes, Diana whispered into Sean’s ear, “I said I didn’t want to kill you. A girl like me deserves to get what she wants, wouldn’t you agree?” />
  She smelled the sharp tang of urine.

  “Lowell Harding.” Sean’s voice shook. “The oil baron. Or ex–oil baron anyway.”

  “No need to be coy,” said Diana. “Give me details.”

  “I don’t know what he’s up to,” said Sean, his tone begging her to believe him. “After the carbon tax ruined his oil cartel, he sold off most of the assets and had me set up meetings for him with government officials all over the place. I’m sure Dag had you work on some of his projects over the years. He said he needed you for something but that it was sensitive and needed to be safely insulated. I set up a couple of cutouts and have just been passing things through.”

  “He asked for me, personally?”

  Sean nodded. “He threatened consequences if the operation wasn’t kept compartmentalized and strictly need-to-know. Lowell’s an . . . asshole. Sees himself as a player, a real tough guy. No qualms about doing whatever he thinks needs to be done. Rules don’t apply when he decides to squash his competition or open up new markets. Let’s just say that he’s not a client I’m proud to serve.”

  “Which is why you took his orders and his threat seriously.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “So said the Nazi in charge of the gas chamber.”

  Sean shrugged. “And you haven’t done things you regret?”

  “I do what I do for my country.”

  “Seems to me the Nazi could have claimed the same. And if you’re such a patriot, why are you working for hire?”

  He was regaining some nerve. Diana had to make the call. Should she press Sean for more, try to squeeze him to the last drop? She thought back to Dag’s descriptions of him, the impression of Sean she’d gleaned from Dag’s feed archive.

  “All right, all right,” she said, patting Sean on the back and retreating a step. He was a good man, and she couldn’t blame him for trying to be loyal to his client. More to the point, this particular well of information had run dry. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

  Sean looked down at his damp slacks. “I’ll take the dry cleaning bill off your fee.”

  “And I’ll pad my invoice with expenses incurred figuring out who the hell was behind this.”

  Diana gave Mr. Snufflebunch a final belly rub.

  Then she waved to Sean and headed for the exit.

  “Pleasure working with you, old boy,” she said. “Oh, and here’s a hot tip. You’ll ruin the blade of your chef’s knife prying open coconuts like that. Buy yourself a machete. While you’re at it, clean out your pantry. You have some pickles in there that expired before I was born. Sometimes it’s the things we forget that refuse to stay hidden.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Diana double-checked her harness, let out a slow breath, and stepped off the roof of the Hay-Adams Hotel. She rappelled down the side of the building, keeping her footing sure but soft on the stone siding as the line whined through her gloved hands. The stars formed a dome above the capital, their dim light and the dispersed city glow bending around the specialized material of the stealth jumpsuit that covered every inch of her body.

  In her feed, she overlaid a digital blueprint of the hotel and checked her position. Perfect. Locking the belay device, she stopped her descent, the harness digging into her thighs. Her feet were braced on a stone pillar, and she sidestepped to the right into the yawning mouth of the adjacent archway. Using her body weight to swing beneath the arch, she hooked a heel over the iron railing, slowly let out slack, and pulled herself onto the balcony within. Standing on the balcony, she recalled her grapple via feed, and the spidery device skittered down after her, attaching itself to a loop on her harness as she collected and secured the line.

  Just as a seasoned public speaker knew the power of a pregnant pause, Diana respected the prime importance of brief moments of respite in the middle of an op. She did an inventory. No sign that anything out of the ordinary had been noticed by the various algorithms she had deployed to scrape the feed. No shouts, sirens, scuffles, or alarms going off. She hadn’t tweaked an ankle rappelling, her gear was all where it should be, and her heart rate was returning to baseline.

  Across the forested grounds opposite the Hay-Adams, the White House glowed. The stately Ionic columns supporting the portico were silent sentinels, and from this angle, the distant, glowing spire of the Washington Monument appeared to rise from the roof as if the executive residence had been impaled by some godlike spear.

  If you’re such a patriot, why are you working for hire? Diana remembered the last time she had walked those halls. Then—Vice President Lopez had nodded to her as she passed, his soul as yet unburdened by crisis and hair still unsullied by gray. She savored the tangible history of those narrow passages, the satisfaction of a mission on the verge of completion, the sense of quiet pride she’d felt knowing that she was there for a reason, that her adoptive country needed her just as she needed it.

  That particular journey had started on the wide avenues of Buenos Aires. The city’s famous jacaranda trees were dropping their delicate blossoms, carpeting the streets in lilac. The black market biochemist was professional and discreet. Diana smuggled the synthetic compound through customs in a diplomatic pouch and ferried it all the way back to Washington under strict orders from Helen that nobody, not even the director, could know about this particular operation. The directive came straight from the Oval Office, and it was there that Diana was to deliver the package to Helen in person. That she had accomplished, President Freeman having been called away to a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. In an unusual display of pride, Helen had squeezed Diana’s shoulder, congratulating her on a job well done. Enjoying the warm afterglow of rare praise, Diana had set off with a bounce in her step, unaware that her life was about to change forever.

  A faint whiff of ash interrupted her reverie. Two half-smoked cigars rested on the arm of one of the balcony chairs, a slim cigarette stubbed out beside them. Time to get this show on the road.

  Turning away from the view, Diana saw that the glass-paneled door had been left ajar. She wouldn’t even need to use the laser cutter. Instead she snatched a miniature canister from her belt and applied WD-40 to the top and bottom hinges. Satisfied, she drew her silenced sidearm. Never hesitate. He who hesitates, dies. Those words of wisdom from her old shooting instructor had saved her life more times than Diana would like to admit. Cracking open the door a few more inches, she slipped inside.

  There was enough ambient light filtering in through the windows that she dismissed her feed night vision. The Federal Suite was a favorite for incoming presidents on the eve of inauguration, and the rooms were enormous and opulently appointed. Golden chandeliers hung above dark wooden tables sporting vases of white roses. Tasteful photography hung on the cream-colored walls. Sofas and chairs were arranged into a variety of seating areas and conversation nooks.

  She moved from room to room with the silent gait of a nocturnal predator, clearing the full kitchen, wood-paneled office, conference room, and entrance hall. Good. No internal security personnel. She removed the shemaugh of stealth textile wrapped around her head. Returned to the main entertaining area for a more thorough inspection.

  While much of the space was pristine, the large circular table in the corner was covered in half-empty bottles of Scotch, tumblers, and scattered playing cards. One of the chairs had been knocked over. Poker chips were stacked haphazardly, and a few stray salted nuts were strewn around the crystal bowl. There was a hunting knife standing vertically, its tip embedded in the lacquered wood. When Diana leaned close, she identified the distinctively spaced notches of a game of five finger fillet. The heady smell of sweat and liquor underscored that this must have been one hell of a poker night.

  Looking around, she spotted the humidor on a side table. Opening the lid, she removed a fat cigar, using the adjacent guillotine to snip the end above the seam. She raised it unlit to her lips. A nice smooth pull.

  Excellent.

  Holstering her weapon, she palmed a wood
en match and made her way to the bedroom. The door had been left open, so she leaned against the frame, struck the match on her harness, held the cigar at a forty-five-degree angle, and slowly rotated it above the tip of the flame until the entire circumference smoldered. Then she puffed on it gently, continuing to rotate it over the match until the flame flashed up and ignited the tobacco.

  The brief flare filled the bedroom with a burst of blood-orange illumination. The light caressed three naked bodies stretched out on the king bed. A short-haired young woman with umber skin rested on her stomach, the geography of her body a fantasia of nubile curves. Another woman slept curled up on her side, her hair long and black, her skin as fair as the other’s was dark.

  Between them lay Lowell Harding.

  CHAPTER 13

  Lowell had the physique of an athlete gone to seed. He lay on his back, flaccid penis between splayed legs, paunch rising and falling in time with his irregular snoring. He had a baby face and a mussed-up mop of light-brown hair with rakish gray streaks along his temples. His right hand cupped the ass of the woman beside him. Thick curls matted his chest, and his foot twitched in reaction to whatever sordid dream his unconscious was staging.