Any Minute Now (10 page)

St. Vincent came after him. “Listen, Doctor, my time is too precious to waste, am I making myself clear enough?”

Lindstrom swallowed hard, then said in a strained voice, loud enough for the scientists closest to him to hear. “Why, yes, I could do with a cup of coffee, thanks very much.” He stretched out an arm. “This way.”

Out in the corridor, Lindstrom turned right, hurried along until he reached a door with a pebbled glass panel. The panel was dark gray, indicating the room beyond was unoccupied. Lindstrom unlocked the door and they went inside.

St. Vincent took out a long gray metal box, walked around the periphery of the room.

“What are you doing?” Lindstrom asked.

St. Vincent put a warning forefinger across his lips. When he had completed his circuit, pointing the box at all the light fixtures and switches, the telephone, in particular, he pocketed the box and returned to stand in front of Lindstrom.

“Okay,” he said, “the only ones who can overhear us are the mice, and unless you've done something extraordinary to them they won't pay us any mind.” He opened his hands wide. “To Mobius, Doctor. Hemingway may find your obfuscating charming but let me assure you that I do not. Cut the crap.”

The Mobius Project took Lindstrom's SUBNETS hypothesis several steps further. Lindstrom had—almost by accident—stumbled on an alkaloid extracted from
Papaver laciniatum
called ‘Przemko,' a virtually unknown cultivar of the opium poppy. It was lost in the shadows because of its very low concentration of morphine content—less than 1 percent, as opposed to 10 percent in the
Papaver somniferum
variety that was grown in profusion in parts of Southeast Asia. Przemko contained so little morphine because other, more complex and unstudied alkaloids crowded it out.

SUBNETS had started out extracting alkaloids from
Papaver somniferum
in an attempt to use them in the project, but to no avail, and that avenue of scientific inquiry was soon abandoned for others. However, the last batch of poppies Lindstrom received was adulterated with a half-dozen Przemko specimens. In an idle moment, he began extracting alkaloids from them, and discovered that one, tripentylheliorphine, contained all the qualities he'd been looking for, and more—far more. He experimented, tweaking its atomic structure again and again until he was satisfied. He anointed the alkaloid triptyne as soon as his experiments with mice gave every indication it was going to work.

He reported to Omar Hemingway at NSA, and the Mobius Project was born. It quickly became a totally dark project, whose funding was piggybacked onto Lindstrom's advanced SUBNETS initiative.

St. Vincent clapped his hands impatiently. “Snap out of it, Doc. I'm about to get pissed, and believe me you don't want to see that.”

A sense of purpose slowly overlaid his fear of this terrifying man. “Yes, well, I have good news and bad news.”

“I'm not interested in bad news, Doctor, so please refrain from including same.”

“But you need—”

“I know what I need, Doctor, not you, not anyone else. You have progressed onto the monkeys, yes?”

“I have. But—”

“No buts, Doctor. You are to move on to human trials.”

“What? But we haven't finished with—”

“No matter,” St. Vincent pressed. “Your subjects will be arriving tomorrow. You will begin then.”

“But, you must understand, this is against all scientific procedure.”

St. Vincent leaned in again, his face close to Lindstrom's. “Are you telling me you refuse to move on with the trials?”

There ensued a deathly silence during which Lindstrom was aware only of his rapid heartbeat and the breath sawing in and out of his half-open mouth.

“No I … No, of course not,” he said at length. “It's just that I think you ought to know something.”

“And what might that be?” He raised a forefinger. “If it's bad news…” There was no need to complete the sentence.

“No, no,” Lindstrom said hastily. “About the monkeys. I lost only one out of a hundred.”

“What happened to that one?” St. Vincent asked in the same tone he used to ask his manicurist to buff his nails.

Lindstrom's face paled.

“Go on, Doctor, have at it. But you do know whatever you tell me won't change my mind.”

“Of course.” Lindstrom ducked his head submissively, thinking, If I could kill anyone, it would be this man. Then he said, without any sense of melodrama, “The monkey ripped its own face off.”

*   *   *

Julie Regan listened for Omar Hemingway to return from lunch down in the bowels of NSA HQ, where all the bigwigs congregated like geese honking their arguments on what route to travel flying south. No one ever won or lost that argument; it was endless.

Julie herself had just finished her yogurt and fresh fruit, which she ate every working day, sitting at her desk. She did this so she could answer phones. Any call at any time might be important enough for her to alert her boss, drag him upstairs away from the constant honking.

Three days had gone by without her finding a proper opening to speak with Hemingway without arousing his suspicion. As her boss liked to joke: “Only the paranoid survive.” Only with him it wasn't a joke. Anyone who worked for him who didn't get that was out on their ear in no time.

Julie had been with him for six years, coming to him when she was still wet behind the ears. She got him instantly, and he got her. Soon after, she became his strong left hand. “I'll keep my right, thank you very much,” he said, when he had summoned her to his office to anoint her. He raised her three pay grades, which was almost unheard of, sent her off on a week's vacation, which, he said, was the last one she'd have for a long time. He hadn't been kidding. Julie got Christmas and New Year's off. Having no family to speak of, and her closeted husband out of town with his family in Missouri, she spent Thanksgivings with Hemingway, which was not nearly as bad as it sounded. Though he entertained few people, he was a tremendous host and, to her astonishment, an accomplished cook. She always stayed over, in the guest bedroom at the opposite end of the house from the master suite. He never once made a pass at her or said anything suggestive. There had been times when she'd wished he would. He had missed his chance, however, and now she had King Cutler to snuggle with. She was far safer with Cutler, anyway.

As usual, she heard Hemingway's booming basso before she saw him. Quickly tossing the remnants of her Spartan lunch in the wastepaper basket, she was already standing when he entered the outer office, which was, in a way, her territory.

He eyed her judiciously. “Calls?”

“Six,” she said. “None urgent.”

He took the clutch of pink notes out of her outstretched hand without breaking stride and vanished into his sanctum. He left his door open, however, and several moments after she heard the desk chair squeak beneath his weight, he called her in.

“Close the door,” he said, as she crossed the threshold.

She did as he asked, thinking, Now, this is unusual. He has never had me in here while the door is closed, not even when he was anointing me.

Hemingway gestured. “Take a pew.”

Not waiting to see if she complied, he swiveled around, stared out his slit-like window, elbows on the arms of his chair, fingers steepled, seeming in deep contemplation. Julie sat in a state of mild anticipation. What in the world could have provoked this behavior? she wondered. Did the honking downstairs finally come to an end? Had something been decided? Or—and here she felt a sudden dread chill her insides—had he somehow found out about her sexual liaison with King Cutler? Impossible, she reminded herself. Their security had been impeccable. But still … she knew, because she had heard Hemingway preach many times, that no security was ever absolute. Someone, somewhere was always devising a better mousetrap.

“I want to tell you about my best friend, Frankie. He wasn't my high school basketball buddy, and he wasn't my college roommate. We didn't go through officer training together. It was the meat-grinder where we met: in-country. 'Nam. At the very edge of the map, where there are no rules, laws, or second chances. We met on the firing lines. In the ten days we were together, we killed more than two dozen North Vietnamese. He saved my life. And when he got shot in the hip I carried him to safety.”

Abruptly Hemingway swung back again to impale her with his eyes. “That's the meaning of friendship, Julie. The meaning of loyalty. The compressed time of war makes for trust, makes for friends for life.”

Her head bobbed in silent assent.

“I trust you, Julie. I want you to know that.”

“Thank you, sir.” Her heart flipped over, thinking of her time screwing King Cutler. Why am I even doing it? she asked herself, although she already knew the answer. Self-esteem had always been a problem for her, no more so than in her sham of a marriage. But had her thought been correct? Did Hemingway know about her betrayal? All at once, she felt dirty, unworthy, humiliated, reactions all too familiar. “I appreciate your candor.”

“Luther St. Vincent. You know him?”

“I wouldn't say know,” Julie said. “But he's the head of Directorate N.”

“And a fucking pain in my ass, excuse my French.” Hemingway sighed. “Unfortunately, he not only outranks me, but he's protected by the mandarins on high.” His hands curled into fists. “He's taken a project away from me. A very important project. I've prepared for this contingency with King Cutler. But now I've been thinking that isn't enough. St. Vincent has one weak spot—his bête noire, you could say. I need your help in this matter.”

“Anything, sir. You can count on me.”

He let his fists subside, so that his hands lay flat on either side of a slim file folder. “Whatever you have planned for tonight, cancel it.”

“I was just going to have dinner, then see a movie.” Actually, Julie had planned to spend the night with Cutler, but that wasn't going to happen now. She knew it shouldn't happen ever again, but she felt trapped, too weak to break it off or even walk away.

“Good.” He opened the file, but didn't glance at it.

Hemingway's eyes shifted away from her, looking at nothing, so far as Julie could tell.

He licked his lips. His face held an expression that made her even more anxious.

“You ever hear of a place called The Doll House?”

“No,” she said truthfully. “But I can guess it's not filled with Barbies and Kens.”

“Quite right.” Hemingway licked his lips again, then cleared his throat. “There's a person of interest who works there. Pole dancer, occasional lap dancer. She goes by the name of Sydny.” He spelled it out for her. “Real name”—now he did consult the file—“Louise Kapok.” He closed the folder, looked up. “She's working tonight. Starts at ten, but I want you to be there earlier to get the lay of the land, as it were.” He chuckled as if just now getting the inadvertent double entendre.

Julie was have difficulty getting over her surprise. “Let me get this straight. You want me to stake out The Doll House?”

“That's right.”

“But I'm not a trained field agent. Surely you have any number of—”

“I do,” he said, “but I don't want a field man. I want you to talk to Sydny woman to woman.”

“About what?”

“I'll tell you in a moment,” he said. “I chose you because you report directly to me and this has to stay between the two of us. It's not an official inquiry, which, as you know, we are forbidden by law to conduct on U.S. soil.” He turned, put the entire file through the shredder beside his desk. “Also I don't want her spooked.”

“Why in the world would she be spooked?”

“Because,” Hemingway said, “one of her best clients is Greg Whitman.”

*   *   *

Universal Security Associates' vetting process was even more exacting than the government's, if that were possible. Whitman had warned Charlie of this, but he needn't have bothered. Charlie was all over it.

She passed the so-called box—the lie detector—with flying colors. That was the least of it; any well-trained agent could beat the box as successfully as any psychopath, which maybe said something pretty nasty about agents.

As far as her background was concerned, there had been some significant deep diving to do before Cutler and his team of earthworms began their digging through her past. This was not particularly difficult, though she was not herself computer-savvy enough to make that kind of magic. For that she needed the Elf Lord. Her real name was Lorraine Few, but only two people who knew her used it.

Charlie had met the Elf Lord at the H2K2 hackers' conference twelve years ago. They had hit it off right away, drank small-batch whiskey all night long, and talked nonstop for three straight days, after which Charlie collapsed in her hotel room and slept for a solid fourteen hours.

The Elf Lord lived in a section of a Georgetown residence that used to be a stable. Her landlords were a couple who worked for the CIA, which was a hoot, since they were under the impression that the Elf Lord made her living solely as a handbag and accessories designer by the name of Helene Riche, as did most of the world. Occasionally one or the other would visit her wholly legit website to order a present for Christmas, Valentine's Day, or the occasional wedding. They hadn't a clue who she really was or what she really did.

Physically, the Elf Lord looked like a Valkyrie: big, blond, blowsy, with an expansive sense of humor that had allowed her to make her den in the heart of enemy territory, as it were. The Elf Lord was always happy to see Charlie, never charged her for work, no matter how complex or time-consuming. Every year, whether she had done work for her or not, Charlie sent the Elf Lord a case of carefully curated whiskeys, all beautifully aged and from the world's best distillers. In short, theirs was a perfect relationship, not the least because each knew all the other's darkest secrets. Charlie trusted the Elf Lord like no one else in her life.