Mouse, right. Mouse had moved west a few years ago. She lived in Calgary now, working as an accountant for a mostly-Tau construction firm. But she kept in touch, called the tranche house every Christmas and always made a point of speaking with Trev and me. “We were amateurs,” I said. “It was lucky we didn’t get hurt. Worse.”
“We were learning what it means to be a Tau, taking risks we wouldn’t take for a stranger. But yeah, we’re better at it now. Still the same impulse, though, right? The way you feel when someone tries to hurt the people you love.”
“Right.”
“Except this time it’s not a jealous ex with a baseball bat, it’s a bunch of Hets who want to take down our entire Affinity. We’re not protecting one guy, we’re protecting Tau as a way of life.”
I nodded.
“So it’s not about Geddy, and it’s not about Jenny. It’s about all of us. We need to keep that in mind.”
He was looking hard at me again.
“Right,” I said.
“Okay. So you’re up for this?”
“I’m up for it.”
“Good.” He grinned. “Because I think that’s our ride pulling up at the curb.”
* * *
The car, supplied by one of Shannon’s tranchemates, was a Toyota sedan that had seen twelve winters; its paint was blistered and the interior smelled like tobacco smoke and stale Doritos. But its motor was fully functional, and it was a good choice, given what we had in mind for it. I volunteered to drive.
My passengers were three local Taus, and they were mostly quiet. We drove through the north end of Schuyler toward the highway, and the town was eerie in the misting rain, streets deserted, dawn just beginning to reveal a sky of tumbling clouds. The car’s radio picked up the analog radio station that had been our only source of news since the blackout, and the news this morning was mixed and mostly speculative. Something terrible had happened in Mumbai, and there were rumors of pitched battles in Karachi and Islamabad. Unnamed experts claimed that a cyberattack aimed at Indian military systems had spread catastrophically and globally, which had triggered retaliatory responses from major players: the unleashing of dozens of varieties of military malware targeting infrastructure nodes in virtually every industrialized nation on the surface of the earth. But electrical power had lately been restored to the west coast of the United States and to some urban areas in the east, and telecom providers were slowly and erratically coming back on line. Which was good news for the world, but maybe not for me—or Geddy.
I told myself Geddy would be okay. He could be spectacularly earnest and naïve, but there was a strength in him, too, a stoicism he had learned the hard way. I had seen the change in him when he was just thirteen years old. Before that, my father could reduce him to sobs with an unkind word. After that, when my father said something vicious, Geddy’s face would cloud but he would clench his jaws and stare furiously. Not suppressing the hurt—I didn’t think he was capable of that—but refusing to give my father the satisfaction of tears.
I imagined Geddy in captivity, showing his captors the same silent defiance. Unless someone even less forgiving than my father had managed to beat it out of him.
The sky was light by the time we reached the highway and headed east. The rain had tapered a little but it was still coming down, soft shifting sheets of it. The Toyota’s wipers creaked over the windshield. After a few minutes of this we reached the unmarked exit for Spindevil Road.
Spindevil was two lanes of potholed blacktop, long neglected by county repair crews. It curved past the abandoned quarry where, many summers ago, I had gone on swimming expeditions with Aaron and Geddy and Jenny Symanski, and pushed on through scrub forest and rocky wild meadows, past isolated properties bounded by split-rail fences and weathered NO TRESPASSING signs. The only other cars I saw were Tau cars, part of our loose convoy, one ahead of me and three behind. We all stopped when we reached Jolinda Smith’s little house, which would serve as our outpost. The farmhouse where the Hets were holding Geddy was three miles farther north, and one of our guys was keeping it under surveillance from the other side of Killdeer Pond.
Trevor was essentially in charge now, and once the crowd at Jolinda’s place was more or less settled I approached him and asked where we stood.
“We need a little more time,” he said. “Maybe an hour, not more than two. Shannon’s headed to downtown Schuyler, she’s probably in place by now, and once everything else is set up we alert her by walkie-talkie and set this thing in motion. Plus we need to allow for travel time from Schuyler to here. But once our ducks are in a row I give it half an hour from first alert to showtime.”
Which was more time than I would have liked, but good work, considering.
* * *
Trevor’s radio crackled again. Since the majority of us were right here, the call could only have been from Shannon or the guy watching the Het house from the other side of Killdeer Pond. Either way, it might be bad news: a delay, a unexpected hitch in the plan.
We stood on the damp porch of Jolinda’s place, rain ticking on the eaves and sluicing down a drainpipe. The walkie-talkie was enormous by comparison with a phone, but it looked small in Trevor’s hand. He put it to his ear and listened for about ten seconds, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he lowered it again.
“I don’t know who the fuck it is,” he said. “But he’s asking for you. For Adam Fisk.”
I took the handset and clicked the send button and said, “This is Adam Fisk.”
A male voice said, “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble there, Adam. Don’t you think we should talk this over first?”
“Who is this?”
“One of the folks playing host to your stepbrother. We’ve been listening to your radio chatter for the last few hours. And we think you’re all needlessly upset. You’re a negotiator, I understand. A kind of diplomat. Well, maybe some negotiation is in order today.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Just that you might want to come knock on our door before you break it down. You’re a little ways south on Spindevil, right? So come up the road and stop by for a chat. Just you.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“To avoid unnecessary violence. Maybe get your stepbrother out of here in one piece, if we come to an agreement. You have our guarantee of safe passage, in and out. But this isn’t an unlimited offer. I figure you’re, what, five minutes from here by car? Plus a little time to sort this all out with your Tau buddies. So we’ll expect you in fifteen minutes, or not at all.”
I said, “Why should I believe you?”
But there was no answer.
* * *
Trevor was against it.
It was Trevor who drove me up Spindevil to the Het house, with Jolinda in the backseat to make sure we reached the right property. We took the Toyota: the disposable vehicle. He said, “You’ll be giving them another hostage—you know that, right?”
We had talked this through once already, though not to Trevor’s satisfaction. “They don’t need another hostage. That’s not what this is about.”
The Toyota’s rattletrap suspension was no match for the potholes on Spindevil. Trev kept his eyes on the road, though he spared the occasional sidelong glance in my direction. The rain had stopped, suddenly and finally, but a chilly wind bowed the roadside oaks and beeches. The clouds had thinned to show a disk of sunlight the color of milk.
I repeated what I had already said to him. Since the Hets were aware of our presence, they could put Geddy in a vehicle and leave the farmhouse, and once they were in motion there was little we could do to stop them. Any kind of direct intervention would endanger Geddy and risk the kind of law-enforcement attention we couldn’t afford. But as long as I was in the farmhouse talking, they would stay put until we were ready to intervene. And if everything went according to plan, it wouldn’t matter whether I was inside or out.
“That’s a huge fuckin’ if,” Trevor said. “We’re talking
about the people who put four Taus in the hospital. They’ll do whatever they think they can get away with.”
“Just up around the bend ahead,” Jolinda said. “You’ll see the house once we pass that stand of oaks.”
“They’re Hets,” I said. “They won’t do anything violent unless they’ve cleared it with their bosses.”
“That might be true of most Hets,” Trevor said. “On a statistical basis. But you’ll be dealing with, like, one guy. Maybe somebody on the far end of the Het curve. Somebody willing to take action on his own hook.”
“There!” Jolinda exclaimed. “See it?”
Trev slowed down as the farmhouse came into view. From this distance it looked like any of a half dozen other properties we had passed. A two-story wood-frame house maybe fifty or sixty years old, painted a bilious, weathered green. Gaps on top where shingles had fallen from the roof. Sagging front porch. Wild oaks on the south side of it; on the north, a few acres of patchy scrub that someone might have tried to farm, once, long ago, in a fit of unjustified optimism. Surrounding all this, a chain-link fence on which signs had been posted:
NO TRESPASSING OR LOITERING
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
“It’s also possible I can talk Geddy out of there. Maybe they reconsidered the whole thing. Maybe they got a call when the telecom was up, telling them things had changed, they don’t need him anymore.”
“Like the way you talked to Amanda,” Trevor said.
“Right.”
The car came to a stop at the end of the laneway that led to the farmhouse, tires crunching on gravel. I took a long look down the laneway to the house, five dark windows facing us: two on the ground floor, two above, and a tiny dormer window in what must have been the attic. Probably a Het guy in each one, watching. Trev said, “There are three vehicles parked in back of it, four Het SUVs and the car Geddy was driving when they took him. We figure at least eight potential hostiles inside. You might not see all of them, so don’t make assumptions. You have the radio?”
One of Shannon’s walkie-talkies, strapped to my belt. We had arranged this before we got in the car. Fifteen minutes after I gained admission to the farmhouse, Trevor would make contact by radio. I would say certain words, or I would not; and as a result certain things would happen, or they wouldn’t.
“Best get on down there if you’re going,” Jolinda said from the backseat.
I opened the door and got out and closed the door behind me. I felt the wind on my face, moist from the morning’s rain. I heard the branches of the oaks groaning in the wind, the spastic idle of the car’s engine. My legs felt too heavy to move but I moved them anyway. I began to walk down the graveled drive to the sagging farmhouse porch, thinking about the people watching me from the lightless mirrors of the windows, wondering which of those rooms Geddy was in.
The porch was in even worse shape than it had looked from the road. The plank steps bowed under my feet, elastic with rot. A naked lightbulb above the door was half filled with rainwater and rust. The door itself was subtly askew on its hinges, and it opened as I raised my fist to knock. A man stood in the shadows behind it. “Come on in, Mr. Fisk,” he said.
I recognized the voice: it was the man I had spoken to over the radio.
And as I stepped inside, I recognized the face.
CHAPTER 23
At least I thought I recognized him. The face was familiar, but I couldn’t connect it with a name or a concrete memory. He was a tall man, white, probably in his forties, with a gym-rat body, bald head, and angular cheekbones that made him look faintly Slavic. He wore jeans and a black sweatshirt, plain but clean. His lips were compressed in a smile that verged on a sneer. He stood back and waved me in.
Where had I seen his face before?
Inside the farmhouse was a large square room, stairs leading to the second story, an arch opening into what appeared to be a kitchen. The floor was wood, floorboards scuffed and muddied to a smoky black. The walls were covered in scabbed green utility paint. The furniture consisted of a worn sofa, six plastic kitchen chairs, and a woodstove ticking away in one corner of the room.
Assuming the tall guy was the boss, three of his subordinates were also present in the room: one next to the window, one blocking the way to the kitchen, and a third (a woman) perched on the stairs. They all carried holstered handguns, and they looked at me with expressions ranging from contempt to indifference.
“Sit down, Adam,” the tall guy said. “Might as well make yourself comfortable while we discuss things.”
“There’s nothing to discuss until I know Geddy is safe.”
“Okay, that’s understandable. Maggie? Want to bring our guest on down?”
The woman nodded and stood and trudged upstairs.
“I’d offer you refreshments but we’re on slightly short rations here. So who’s waiting for you in the car? Your friend Trevor? That local woman who runs Gizmos on Main Street? Smart of her to dole out radios like that. Working the tranche, right? But we have friends in town, too. People who might notice something like a local Tau and some strange man hauling armloads of walkie-talkies out the back door of an electronics store.”
I said nothing. He shrugged. “Go on,” he said, “sit down,” waving his hand at a chair, and under the cuff of his sweatshirt I caught sight of a Het tattoo, small and black. A bisected rectangle, like a cartoon drawing of a sash window.
And then I realized: No, I hadn’t seen his face before.
I had drawn it.
* * *
The woman came back downstairs with Geddy behind her and another Het guy taking up the rear, as if they were afraid he’d make a run for it. Not that he seemed likely to do any such thing.
Geddy wore the clothes he’d had on when he left the house a day ago: linen slacks, khaki-green cotton shirt, a pair of ratty sneakers. He looked as grim as a prisoner on his way to the gallows. But he stopped moving the moment he spotted me. His face went through serial evolutions: he grinned; then he looked confused; then he looked frightened.
“Hey, Geddy,” I said.
“Hey,” he said tentatively.
“You all right? Did these folks hurt you in any way?”
He gave it a moment’s thought. “They won’t let me leave. They didn’t hurt me. But they threatened to.”
“We’ll get you out of here,” I said.
“Hold your horses,” the guy with the Het tattoo said. “That’s not an established fact just yet. That’s what we need to talk about. Sit over there on the sofa, Geddy.” He turned to me. “So did his mother name him after Geddy Lee? From that old-time Canadian band, Rush? Because we asked, but he wouldn’t tell us.”
“The name’s from his mother’s side of the family. Long line of Geddys. How about you? Do you have a name?”
“Call me Tom.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Of course not. And you really need to sit down.”
I sat in the chair next to the woodstove. I crossed my legs and put my left hand on my thigh so I could see my watch without obviously checking it. Five minutes had passed since I had left the car. Ten to go. I said, “There’s no point dancing around. Just tell me what you want.”
Tom pulled a chair away from the wall and put it in front of me and sat in it so that our knees were almost touching. When he spoke I could smell his breath, sour and pungent, as if he’d been living on black coffee and brie. “No offense, but you people must be pretty stupid if you don’t know what we want.”
“Who’s we in this case? You? Your tranche? Your sodality? Your Affinity?”
“Come on, Adam. We want your brother Aaron to vote on the Griggs-Haskell bill without interference. We know Tau has a different preference, and we know Tau is in possession of some video footage that might embarrass Aaron right out of the House of Representatives. We suspected something like that before we picked up Geddy, though he was kind enough to confirm it—right, Geddy?”
Geddy inspected the floorboards
and said nothing.
“If you’re making a threat,” I said, “you need to be explicit about it.”
“You’re the folks making a threat. In your case, Adam, a threat against your own brother! We’re just responding in kind. So don’t talk like you have the moral high ground here.”
I had drawn this man’s face, years ago, in Vancouver, working from Rachel Ragland’s description of the men who had come to question her. (Bald as a bottle cap, she had said, head like a bread loaf, mouth that opens like a puppet’s jaw.) If this wasn’t the same man, it was at least someone who matched both the description and the drawing. Rachel had also mentioned the Het tattoo: same size, same place. So it was no surprise the guy seemed to know me. He worked for Het security, and he could have been keeping a file on me (and Amanda and Damian) ever since the disastrous Vancouver potlatch. He might even have been involved in the murder of Meir Klein.
I said, “You’re still not telling me what you want, Tom.”
“What we want is a guarantee that Aaron will be allowed to cast his vote unmolested, as God and the electorate intended.”
“God and the electorate and the Het lobby.”
“Sure, if you like. And let me emphasize, we have no interest in harming Geddy. But if you were to walk out that door with him, both Het and Aaron would be hanging in the wind. He’s our leverage against Jenny, and without Jenny you have no acceptable case to make. The video by itself won’t convince anybody. Jenny’s the key. So we need to be in a position to bargain. We need Jenny to know something bad might happen if she joins this conspiracy of yours.”
What this told me was that he didn’t know Tau had secured a second affidavit from one of Aaron’s recent girlfriends. As far as Tau was concerned, his threat was meaningless. Amanda had made it clear: the video would be released whether or not Jenny consented … and whether or not Geddy was still being held captive.