“With Diane Cooledge.”
“Among others, I guess.”
“Do you know how suspicious that looks to us?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’ll tell you: damn suspicious. My boss thinks Eric is up to no good.”
“Clement has a right to his opinions.”
“Jerry, we could fence around all night. You and Eric are messing with something. We don’t know just what it is, but it smells. You’ve got a computer that’s defended like Fort Knox, and that doesn’t look good.” Pierce grinned. “That’s just Flatfoot’s new program.”
“Flatfoot Fujii? It figures. But how come you’ve got this new program and we don’t?”
“It just went into production a week or two ago. I can give you a copy tomorrow.”
The waiter arrived and they ordered after a glance at the menus. Then Jasmin said: “I’m trying to decide which way to jump, and you’re not making it any easy.”
Pierce lifted his eyebrows.
“Clement’s had me trying to track down the source of all these scandals. I’m not getting anywhere, but I’m sure you guys are involved. I don’t mind that. Maybe you’ve got a really good idea going. Maybe I ought to be on your side. But I need to know what the hell you’re doing.”
“Hey,” Pierce murmured. “Eric’s an ex-RSD employee. I’m an ex-T-Colonel. He’s twenty-two years old and I’m eighteen. As you ought to know.” He was rubbing her nose in it a little: Trainable etiquette discouraged mention of what ought to be common knowledge. “The source of the scandals is a lot of incompetent jerks. How are we supposed to be able to start a bunch of scandals with ExComm and the CEA and God knows who else?”
Jaz smiled and gave him a direct look over the candles.
“That’s exactly what Jonathan would like to know.”
Pierce looked back, and she found herself glancing away. For the first time in weeks she began to think that maybe her suspicions were wrong: Pierce would have to play some kind of important role in Eric’s plans, but Pierce’s eyes in the candlelight looked crazy. Crazy people couldn’t function, not as Pierce would have to.
“What was it like on Ulro?” she asked suddenly.
The glint in Pierce’s eyes faded a little at the shift in the conversation.
“Quiet. Really quiet. Did you think the question would rattle me?”
“No,” she lied. “Just curious.”
“Well, I’m curious, too. Why does Clement have a thing about Eric?”
“Eric was such a bright boy. People said he’d be running RSD when Jonathan retired, unless something even better turned up for him first. I don’t know if Jonathan liked the idea or not. Eric’s a big pain in the ass, but he can be fun to be around. Never know what he’ll think of next.”
Pierce grinned. “True.”
“And then it all got screwed up by the Ulro project. Except it didn’t really get screwed up, did it? You got whatever it was he sent you for. You didn’t tell Eric the repository was destroyed. You probably weren’t in shape to say anything. But he was there in the chamber with you, and you gave him those six microfiches. I’ll bet you gave him a lot more than that.”
“You’re smart,” said Pierce with a crooked smile. “IQ of 175, Pattern Apprehension Response of three seconds with ten percent of a Level 20 pattern. What your files don’t say much about is your ability to make strong commitments. Your dad left you and your mother when you were ten, right?”
“What’s this got to do with anything?” Jaz asked coldly.
“You started sleeping with men when you were thirteen, always men a lot older than you, men old enough to be your father. You even slept with the man who Tested you. You picked men with a lot of suppressed unhappiness. Men who felt they were losing their grip, getting old. And you offered them — what? A chance to feel young and manly?”
“You tell me, Jerry.”
“Whatever it was, they usually fell in love with you. And then you’d cut them off. ‘If you ever come near me again I’ll tell the police you raped me.’ Give them a taste of your father’s medicine, show them what it’s like to be deserted by somebody you love. The thing is, you really loved them, too. It wasn’t just casual revenge.
“So you ended up with the Agency, working for an un-Trainable who’s a lot like your father and all the other men in your life. He’s a jerk, but he’s not entirely stupid, and he’s got access to your files, too. He knows you fixate on guys like him. You’re a lot more grown up now, you’re not going to try to seduce the head of the RSD, but your habits are pretty well set. So he uses you. Exploits you. You’re a Trainable, jumping through hoops for an un-Trainable, and part of you is glad about it and part of you is disgusted. So you learn more than you tell Clement, and you don’t know which way to jump. Intellectually you know you ought to be on Eric’s side, whatever the hell he’s up to. Emotionally you can’t bring yourself to leave papa. But you will.”
“Because I always sell out the men who love me.”
“No, you always sell out the men you love. I don’t think Clement gives a damn about you.” Again Pierce looked straight into her eyes. “The only question is when.”
Jaz stared at the candle flame. “If you’re through showing off your ability to get into my files…You haven’t denied what I said, about Eric getting something from you in the chamber.”
The waiter arrived with their veal. After a moment Pierce cut a piece, ate it, and nodded.
“Good?” she asked.
“Fair. But I was agreeing with you.”
The fork was trembling in her hand; she forced herself to meet his eyes. “You mean I’m right.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And why are you admitting it?”
“It’d be nice to have you on our side.”
“And if I sell you out, the way I’m supposed to sell out Jonathan?”
“You won’t, even if you want to.”
“Why not?”
“No point. First of all, you don’t love Eric or me; we’re not your type at all. Second, you don’t have time. The government’s about to fall. Any minute. How’s your veal?”
They talked quietly in the restaurant for a long time. Then he walked her back to her apartment in Wigner’s old building on East 52nd and refused her offer of a nightcap. He went to the subway station and waited in the dimness for almost an hour before the train came, packed with people. Silent, he stood in the crowded car as it rumbled downtown.
He walked across the Village, whose streets seemed deserted compared to last summer. A couple of blocks from home, he saw an unfamiliar car parked under a streetlight. It was a glossy blue Plymouth with gold trim, the kind the Agency and FBI often used. Like a poisonous butterfly, it flaunted itself so that predators would keep clear. Drawing closer, Pierce recognized the license plate of an Agency car. He; wondered what the Agency was doing in the Village.
The men in the car were familiar faces from some flickerscreen: Agency goons often used for stakeouts. Pierce passed the car and turned right at the next comer. Another Plymouth, parked at the end of the block, held two more men.
For a moment Pierce felt like pausing to chat with them, then realized he might compromise their operation. Better to go on home.
— Unless Jaz Jones had talked, and he was the target of their operation.
He walked up to the second car and rapped on the driver’s window. The man looked at him in the uncertain lamplight.
“You guys sure look bored,” Pierce said.
“I’ll be damned!” said the driver with a big grin. That confirmed it: these men were un-Trainables who had no reason to recognize him. “Hey, Jerry, climb in and have a drink. Yeah, it’s pretty boring, all right.” The left rear door clicked open. Pierce got in, noting that the perspex barrier behind the front seat was down. The little yellow lights on the dashboard indicated the car’s defences were operational. An assault from outside would have left him retching on the street in a cloud of Mace or worse.
The driver’s companion turned around, passing him a hip flask.
“There you go, my friend.”
“Thanks.” Pierce shot him with the Mallory at low impact, the flechette hitting just below the man’s collarbone. An instant later, as the driver was reaching for the old-fashioned microphone hanging under the dash, Pierce shot him as well.
The flechettes worked instantly, inducing a moment of shock and then unconsciousness. Pierce awkwardly lugged the driver into the backseat. Then he got into the driver’s seat and listened to the others in the stakeout chatting over the radio.
“We have an acquisition on Target 1,” an unfamiliar voice broke in after half an hour. “We’ll maintain position around Target 1; Target 2 may turn up.”
“Hope so,” said the stakeout man whose car had first attracted Pierce’s attention. “I wanna go home. I’m tired.”
“C Group,” said the dispatcher’s voice, “you guys still on post or what?”
Pierce thumbed the microphone. “Copy,” he mumbled.
“Stay awake.”
“Copy.”
Target 1 was surely Wigner, and they had an acquisition. The Agency had picked up Wigner just as everything was about to fall apart.
Pierce looked at his watch. In about fifteen minutes the men would begin to revive. He spent the time thinking and watching the occasional pedestrian or bicyclist hurry past the car.
Finally, the men began to snore, and then to gasp and smack their lips. The man slumped in the seat next to Pierce opened his eyes first. He had the usual calm, detached look of someone who’d been doped, and he looked at Pierce without fear or surprise. A few seconds later the man in the backseat, the driver, woke also. Pierce slid around a little so he could face them both.
“Where are they taking Wigner?” he asked.
“Who’s Wigner?” mumbled the man in the backseat. He was stocky man with a crewcut and bad skin; Pierce was annoyed at not recognizing him.
“Target 1.”
“I don’t know.”
Pierce looked at the other man sitting close beside him. His name was Ernest Peurifoy; Pierce had seen his files.
“Ernest. I need to know where they’ve taken Eric Wigner. Don’t play dumb with me.”
“I really don’t know, Jerry.”
“And where were you supposed to take me, Ernest?”
“That’s not part of our job. We’re just stakeouts.” Pierce sighed and glanced out the windshield. “Ernest, you and your friend are pros, all right? So save me this name, rank, and serial number stuff. In about five seconds I’ll kill your friend in the backseat, just to get your attention, and if you tell me after he’s dead I’ll be pissed off at you anyway and I might kill you, too. If you’re both heroes, you’ll both be dead and your wives will get nice certificates to hang over the mantel, about what brave servants of the country you were. If you guys had the drop on me, you know damn well I’d talk. So give us all a break.”
“I don’t know, Jerry,” said Ernest. He was tall and lanky, with straight grey hair falling across his lined forehead. As the Ketaset wore off, his expression grew more alert.
“Shit,” said Pierce, and shot the stocky man in the chest. The flechette made a short, sharp crack as it struck a rib and penetrated. The stocky man sighed wetly and slid over onto the seat.
“That was Impact 9,” Pierce lied. “Talk, Ernest.”
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, hell. You killed him. I oughta — ”
“Talk.”
“I — I — it’s supposed to be the building up at 84th and Riverside. They’re going to pump him full of shit and find out what he’s been up to.”
“Who gave the orders?”
“Clement, who else?”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”
“Who else knows besides the stakeout team?”
“Now, now, I really do not know, Jerry. Maybe some of Clement’s office people. I don’t know.”
“Jasmin Jones?”
“The kid? Cute one? Jesus, I don’t know. I don’t think she ever gets into this kind of stuff.”
Pierce fired the Mallory into Ernest’s stomach. Ernest gasped and asked in a quavering voice: “Jerry, did you kill me?”
“No. Not your friend either. Go back to sleep.”
As soon as Ernest had slumped against the window, Pierce turned on the car ignition and made a U-tum.
After lugging Ernest into the lee of a dumpster in an alley off Sheridan Square, Pierce heard the radio paging C Group. He hurried back, mumbled a few words into the microphone, and then hauled the other man out.
He would have to work fast, against too many variables. Even in its decrepitude the Agency had more than enough power to stop him. Everything would hinge on moving faster than it could and on not running into needless trouble.
He drove quickly but carefully north, back to East 52nd. An obvious Agency car could be parked easily in the security garage under Jasmin’s apartment building; from there he went to the intercom and tapped the sequence of buttons that coded for her apartment.
“Yes?”
“It’s Jerry again. I’m in the garage. I need you.”
“So, we’re supposed to go up to Riverside Drive and rescue him?”
She sat on the couch in her tiny living room huddled in a terrycloth bathrobe, her damp hair wrapped in a towel. Pierce sat opposite her in an armchair; between them, on a cheap teak coffee table, stood a silver tea service and two bone china cups.
“They’ll pump him dry, and when they learn what he knows they’ll decide to kill him right away. As soon as Eric’s dead they’ll go after everyone in the wailing-wall network, everyone who got Flatfoot’s program. That way they’ll have a fighting chance to survive the Wabbies, because we won’t have an organized group ready to take over.”
“But will they even believe what Eric tells them? Everything’s perfectly normal, the computers are all working, so why should they do something as drastic as killing Eric and arresting a whole bunch of people?”
“He’ll be telling the truth as only drugs can make him. And they’re not entirely dumb. They’ll know that their chances of rolling us up are fairly good as long as they still haven’t been hit with the virus. Once their computer net breaks down, the advantage will go over to us.”
“Because you’ll have a functioning network.”
“Enough to enable the Senate to pass Bill 402 and dissolve the CEA, and then run something like a provisional government long enough to get us into the IF.”
“And we’ve got to get Eric out?”
“Two reasons. One, he knows more than anyone else. He’s the manager. Two, he’s my friend.”
“That’s really sweet.”
“Dry your hair and get dressed.”
They went back downstairs to the garage. Pierce backed the Plymouth out of a visitor’s stall and drove slowly to the barred gate. The guard came out of his little office and manually unlocked the gate. “Something wrong?” Pierce asked.
“Aw, the computer’s down for the whole building. Pain in the ass.”
“That’s never happened before,” said Jaz as they turned north on Madison. “My apartment’ll probably be overheated or freezing when we get back.”
“Worry more about the building defences. That guard didn’t look as if he could fight off a mean little kid.” Pierce clicked his tongue in annoyance; the traffic signals, all the way up the avenue for blocks, were blinking green in all directions. Traffic was already snarling up at the intersections.
Making an abrupt U-turn, Pierce drove a block south and managed a right tum onto 5lst. Traffic here was a little lighter, so they made progress despite more all-green signals. As they reached Sixth Avenue all the lights went out — signals, street lamps, and the few lights burning in the buildings.
Pierce swore and punched on the car’s radio. The stakeout teams downtown were barking at one another and complaining
about the blackout. Someone interrupted every few seconds by calling for C Group.
“That’s us,” Pierce said. “For all the progress we’re making, I might as well have stayed in the Village.”
“Listen,” said Jaz brightly, “I’m not sure I ought to be doing this. I mean, you’re the soldier. I’m not much good at close combat. I never even went to Camp Peary.”
“I don’t need you for combat.”
“Then what? Do I get to play nurse?”
“No. I’ll need you for more than that. Just be patient.”
He swung the Plymouth up onto the sidewalk, turned the corner, and slid into a gap in the traffic going up Sixth Avenue. Someone honked angrily behind them; Pierce changed lanes and accelerated.
The blackout evidently covered most of Manhattan, maybe the whole city; Jaz could find no local radio stations on the air, only police and agency broadcasts and a few Iffers. The pilot of a police helicopter reported a demonstration breaking up at Strawberry Fields in Central Park.
“Goddam Iffers,” the pilot commented. “Burning their little candles. Looks real pretty. Wish I could strafe the bastards.”
“That’s right on our way,” Pierce observed. They were already in the park. “If we have to, we’ll abandon the car and walk up to 84th.”
“In a blackout?”
His smile was a quick flash in the darkness. “Scared of the dark?”
“Goddam right.”
“This is Tango Niner” a voice rasped from the speaker. "Can you give us a checkout on an’82 Mercury, New Jersey license RTE 456?”
“Tango Niner, I could walk out there and take a look. Be quicker, maybe. The computer has totally crashed. Weird. All these little honeycomb shapes, then blooey.”
Pierce took a hand off the steering wheel, bunched it as if about to strike a violent blow, and then lightly tapped the wheel.
“They did it. The Wabbies have finally made their move.”
CHAPTER XVI
Wigner’s body was limp in the hands of the four men who lugged him onto a stretcher from the backseat of the Plymouth. He had never been drugged before; the utter helplessness was more unnerving than the fact of being a prisoner.
The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2) Page 19
