Seger nodded, weakly.
“Japanese Nationalists?”
Seger froze, looking down. She jabbed the barrel of the gun into the flesh under his jaw, forcing his head up.
“Yes or no?”
“If I told you—”
She smiled. “That’s enough of an answer. I know who to thank for the Afghanis who tried to kill me. Now we come to the million-dollar question—”
Evi leaned in until they were barely a centimeter apart. “Why?”
“I just handle the real estate. They don’t tell—”
“I’m going to ask you again. Why? If you say you don’t know, I’m going to put a bullet through your head and toss you into the East River.”
Seger sucked in a breath and started shaking. Evi could hear him subvocalize, “Where the hell are they?”
“Where the hell is who?”
Seger looked her in the face. He was on the verge of panic. “No one—”
That’s why he was stalling. Evi backed away from Seger, pointing the gun at him. “Where is it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The tracking device, where is it?”
The color drained from Seger’s face. “They made me eat it.”
She kept backing away. “I should blow you the fuck away—”
“Damn it, you think I wanted this? Do you know what those creatures are like? I was treated like an animal—”
“WHY?” Evi yelled at him. Her gun was shaking.
“They want their people back—” He was interrupted by the sound of an approaching aircar. He looked out over the river. Evi could see the sleek black wedge of a Chrysler Wyvern.
Seger started waving his free hand and shouting. “Here, over here!”
She could see what was about to happen. She got on the ground behind a city truck and yelled, “Seger, get down!”
Machine gun fire strafed the lower level of the Queensboro bridge. She looked out from under the truck and saw Seger jerk backward and lose his footing. He ended up dangling from one velvet-cuffed arm.
A bullet came too close, blowing out the truck’s tire opposite her.
Damn.
She wedged herself between the truck and the concrete median, her back to a rear tire. She was pinned where she was. She could hear the Wyvern hovering on the other side of the truck. Was the driver going to try to slide into the hole in the wall?
Damn it, he was. She could hear the whine of the fans change in character as the Wyvern made its approach. She could smell the electricity off its inductor. Then a breeze started blowing around her as the aircar began to dust the concrete.
Evi swallowed and checked the Mishkov.
She had six shots and the switchblade in her boot. She wondered if it would be enough. She doubted it. The hit on her condo had been a costly mistake, a mistake that people like the NLF rarely made twice.
She could smell the canines now, more than three of them.
She had two choices, sit or bolt.
If she bolted, they’d shoot at her. She didn’t like that idea. So far she’d avoided getting a bullet in her. She’d like to keep it that way.
Perhaps now was the time to test the hypothesis that they wanted her alive.
Someone hit the underside of the Queensboro bridge with a spotlight. What had been the sound of a slow advance behind her became running and scrambling. The night was sliced open by sirens and the sound of helicopters.
An overamplified voice over a PA system ordered, “Step away from the aircar.”
There was the sound of machine-gun fire from behind her, the distant sound of shattering glass, and the spotlight went out. She heard the Wyvern rev up.
The cops opened fire.
She pulled herself into a little ball. Concrete chips flew by her. Bullets ricocheted off the truck she hid behind, carrying the smell of sparking metal. Two more tires blew out.
There was a loud pop and the smell of molten ceramics as a bullet clipped an active inductor. It had to be the Wyvern. She heard the fans die, and the gunfire ceased in time for her to hear the Wyvern splash home.
Another spotlight lit up the lower level, and she could hear cars approaching from both directions. Red and blue began to cut into the white of the spotlight. Short of dashing for the edge of the bridge and diving into the East River, there was nowhere she could go. The Wyvern might have had her pinned, but the cops had her surrounded.
It had been only ten minutes since she ditched the Mirador. She had been overly pessimistic about NYPD response time.
She put the Mishkov on the ground next to her, and when a NYPD uniform ducked around the truck, gun drawn, she spread her hands wide. “I surrender.”
The cops pulled her out into the open. Black-and-whites were everywhere. Way too many for deep-sixing a car. Like the cops that had surrounded the theater on Times Square, these boys had come out of nowhere. It was as if there were a whole division of NYPD cops primed and ready to . . .
To what?
The cop bent her over the hood of a new Chevy Caldera cop car. He patted her down and emptied her pockets. Three cops stood by with ready weapons. The cop liberated her wallet, her backpack, and several magazines for the Mishkov.
The cop car was too damn new. The cops also had a pair of helicopters. One swept the East River with a spotlight while the other just hovered with its light trained on the bridge. The cops themselves were too well equipped.
They were also too white.
By the time the cop took her sunglasses and started ushering her to a windowless van, Evi realized that there were only two blacks in a group of nearly thirty NYPD officers, and there were no Hispanics, or Asians . . .
She was roughly cuffed to a bar inside the van as she realized she was looking at a well-camouflaged Agency operation.
• • •
They let her stew for two hours after the van stopped moving. There wasn’t any light, and there was nothing to do but sit and try not to think about the way the cuffs hurt her shoulder.
Why am I still alive, Abdel?
Obviously, came the reply, we’re guilty of faulty reasoning at some point. The Agency wants something beyond your demise.
The Agency proper didn’t want to ice her. Hofstadter was acting on his own initiative with the sniper. That would explain why Frey was helping her rather than trying to kill her.
It didn’t explain why the Aerie wouldn’t acknowledge her existence.
It also didn’t explain what the peeper had recorded on his binoculars.
It was after ten when the door on the transport opened. She was as far from the door as the chain on the cuffs would allow. The rear of the van whooshed aside and the first thing that hit her was the smell. The New York subway system was the only place where she had ever come across that particular flavor combining the odors of fermenting urine, century old grease, stagnant water, overheated transformers, and dead air.
Somewhere, a train passed by. The noise rattled the walls of the van and made Evi’s teeth ache.
The open door faced an anachronism. Amidst the cracked dirty tile, blackened girders, and crumbling concrete were scattered brand-new comms, electronic surveillance equipment, and dozens of people in NYPD uniforms.
The small command center had taken over an old subway platform, and Evi couldn’t see more than ten meters past it because the entire area was lit by extremely bright temporary lamps that hung from a ceiling that was invisible beyond them.
Most of the “cops” swarmed around the equipment and ignored Evi and her van; three didn’t.
Two were leveling automatic weapons at the van. They were Agency. The NYPD didn’t issue Uzis to patrol officers. As if to drive the point home, the third was Sukiota.
Sukiota climbed into the back of the van. The door remained open, and guns remaine
d leveled at Evi as Sukiota walked in front of her. Sukiota balled her hand into a fist and slammed it into Evi’s stomach. It was so fast that Evi had no time to prepare for the impact. She doubled over and started retching.
When she was done spilling pork and bean curd over the floor of the van, Sukiota grabbed her by the chin and lifted her head to face her. “For my car, Isham, and the theater.”
A gob of half-digested tofu dribbled out of Evi’s mouth. “Sorry,” she managed to choke out.
Sukiota slammed her knee into Evi’s solar plexus. The pain spasmed every muscle in Evi’s body. She shook with dry heaves, and she prayed that she wasn’t suffering any internal injuries.
“Want to know why you’re alive?”
All Evi could manage was a hoarse monosyllable.
“You’re alive because you are screwing with my mission.” Sukiota grabbed Evi’s bad shoulder and violently pulled her upright. A dagger of fire raced down the length of Evi’s arm. “And I want to know why!”
She looked at Sukiota, and she began to realize that something else was going on here. Something she hadn’t known, or guessed at.
Sukiota released Evi’s shoulder and sat down across from her. “Do we have an understanding?”
Evi nodded. She understood. She knew the type of agent Sukiota was.
Another train passed nearby, the lights outside dimmed briefly, and dust filtered in through the open door to the van.
“Who do you work for, Isham?”
She couldn’t stop her silent laugh, even if she was risking being hit again. “Same people you do.”
Sukiota hit her with a backhand slap that was more irritating than painful. “Bullshit. I thought of that, when you called the Aerie. You aren’t on the database.”
“Then I got erased.”
“Convenient. You were carrying a ramcard of surveillance footage. Who are the principals in the apartment?”
Evi told her. If Sukiota was on the ball, she knew already.
Sukiota nodded at the names she knew. “Good. Now I’d like you to explain to me how seven dead people are screwing with my mission.”
“What?” Dead?
Sukiota leaned forward. “Ezra Frey died in an explosion on an Agency mission in Cleveland in August ’53. Erin Hofstadter has been missing ever since a State Department fact-finding mission into occupied Japan in December ’53. David Price drove his car into Chesapeake Bay in September ’53. Davidson, his first name is—was—Leo, burned in his house in San Francisco May 23rd, 2055. The professor-type’s name is Scott Fitzgerald, and he was supposed to have fallen from a radio telescope and broken his neck in ’53 . . .”
Sukiota paused, apparently to gauge Evi’s reaction. Evi knew she must have looked as shocked as she felt. “I suppose you didn’t know you were looking at a recording of a room full of corpses? Two more are on the walking dead list, Isham. The guy you called ‘Gabe’ had the code designation ‘Gabriel,’ a freelance assassin. He was reported neutralized in ’54—”
“You said two.” Sukiota had gone through the whole room.
Sukiota smiled and pulled a ramcard out of her pocket and looked at it as if she could read it with the naked eye. “You mean you don’t know? Someone invested a lot of time and energy to falsify dozens of secure databanks on your behalf—”
“What the hell—”
Sukiota grabbed her by the neck, choking off her statement, and held the edge of the ramcard a few millimeters from her eye. Evi watched a rainbow shimmer shoot across the edge of the card.
Sukiota shook the card. “Don’t play dumb, Isham. The Aerie doesn’t respond to dead agents. And you died, Isham. In December 2053, a few days after Hofstadter disappeared—”
Evi’s eye was beginning to water. She couldn’t take her gaze off the edge of the ramcard. “I was transferred,” Evi whispered.
“Where.”
“We call it the Domestic Crisis Think Tank.”
Sukiota loosened her grip. “All these corpses work there?”
“I don’t know.” Sukiota tightened and Evi speeded up. “Dave Price and Hofstadter I’m sure, Davidson maybe. The others I never heard of before yesterday.”
“Who runs the place, and where is it?”
“Hofstadter runs my department. It’s all in a building off Columbia. Broadway. 109th.”
Sukiota leaned back, rolling the ramcard in her fingers. “That’s good. See how simple it is. You answer my questions and bad things don’t happen. Now you are going to tell me what happened in your condo.”
Chapter 14
Sukiota questioned her for three hours. The only thing Evi tried to hide was her evening with Diana. Thankfully, Sukiota didn’t seem to care much where Evi spent her night. What Sukiota wanted were details, details about the Afghanis and the NLF, and details about the Domestic Crisis Think Tank . . .
Sukiota never once asked about the aliens.
Evi had mentioned the aliens, when Sukiota had questioned her about the scenarios she’d been cooking for Hofstadter. Evi’d responded with the studies she’d written up on a hypothetical invasion.
Sukiota’s only reaction had been a condescending smirk. She’d been much more interested in Evi’s studies of hypothetical moreau violence.
When Sukiota finished the questions that interested her, she un-cuffed Evi and, escorted by five Uzi-toting pseudo-cops, led her back on the abandoned subway platform and tossed her in a holding cell.
The cell was as makeshift as the rest of their headquarters. It used to be a public john. The place had been stripped. Dead pipes jutted out of the walls. The musty urine smell had stayed, as if it were baked into the yellowing tile, under the cracked glaze. Spray-painted graffiti wrapped around the walls, mostly gang names. The name “Pendragon” seemed to predominate. That and the 130th Street something-or-other. They cuffed her to a pipe in the wall near the floor.
One lit fluorescent tube dangled from the ceiling by a pair of frayed wires. It rattled and blacked out every time a train passed close by.
A pipe near the door dripped irregularly. The echo was irritating enough that Evi thought they had purposely chained her out of reach of the drip as a low-grade torture.
At least she’d learned something about what was going on, although it was depressing to learn that someone had already written her obituary back in 2053.
It was clear that the Domestic Crisis Think Tank had stepped beyond the Agency’s purview. Not only that, Sukiota showed no knowledge of the aliens. At the think tank, the aliens were taken as a given. A top secret given, but a given. It looked as though everything that Evi had uncovered in Cleveland had never gotten beyond Frey, who’d been fielding the operation.
Instead of booting the aliens upstairs, Frey must have bottled up everyone involved and siphoned off funds for his own operation. For six years she had been working for some private conspiracy.
A private conspiracy that wanted her dead.
Hofstadter was behind the sniper.
Frey had been surprised at what was going on. Frey had been running toward her building. Frey had asked her about Hofstadter’s state of mind. And Frey had mentioned that he had been on vacation himself. The last thing he had ever said was that he needed her help.
Frey set up the conspiracy that ran the think tank. He had to be the person behind it. He was the only one in a position to bottle up knowledge of the aliens. And the timing of most of the “deaths” had been shortly after the Cleveland mission.
He might have set up the conspiracy, but it looked as if he had lost control of it. Hofstadter had taken over. That would explain Frey’s behavior . . .
She remembered something Frey had said. “Price was right.”
If Hofstadter, Davidson, and Gabriel were the forces arrayed against her, perhaps Frey and Price were allies. Frey was dead, but Price might still be out there. He was l
ocking out calls to his comm, but Dave could still be sitting in his house in Jackson Heights.
Queens, Evi thought.
Frey was going to take her to a “safehouse” in Queens.
Evi let out with her silent laugh. Price was an ally, if he was still out there. She looked around the pit she found herself in. How the hell was she going to contact Price?
She had to get out of here. She didn’t trust the Agency, especially after finding out that for six years she’d been a de facto traitor. She didn’t picture Sukiota allowing her to outlive her usefulness. She might have already passed that point.
She looked at the pipe she was chained to. If she could get free of it, she might have a chance to get out of here. They hadn’t found the switchblade in her boot.
A switchblade against Uzis?
Shut up, Abdel.
One cuff was around her right wrist, thankfully her good arm; the other was cuffed around the base of a pipe extending out of the wall. The pipe terminated in a lip that held a large connector that would have attached to some part of a John. The piece was rusted and fused into a single object.
If she could loosen the connector, she could slide off the handcuffs.
The catch was, she had to do it lefthanded.
Evi gritted her teeth and grabbed the connector with her left hand. Just bending her arm to reach it shot a lance of pain through her shoulder.
“This isn’t going to be fun,” she whispered to herself.
She sucked in a deep breath and twisted the end of the connector as hard as she could. It felt as if she were trying to twist her shoulder out of her socket. She kept pushing, trying to ignore the grinding she felt in her shoulder. The rough, rusty surface of the connector bit into her fingers, and her grip began to slide on her own blood.
She heard a snap, and her hand slipped off the pipe. She fell to the floor and, for a few seconds, thought that the snap had been the bone in her shoulder. But as the pain receded and her breathing returned to normal, she realized that the noise had come from the pipe.
The connector had remained fused to the pipe, but the pipe itself now rotated freely. She pulled on the end of it, and it slid out from the wall. The end that came out from the wall was threaded and polished smooth. The handcuffs slid easily over it.