Cold Warriors (38 page)

"It was no coincidence," Hammond said blandly.

PD's chair squeaked against the floor as he shifted. When she turned to look at him she saw that he was watching her through narrowed eyes.

"You weren't bullshitting me," she said. "You really work for the government."

Hammond shrugged. "For the... let's say for the CIA."

She'd moved beyond fear into a kind of frozen calm so brittle it might shatter at the slightest pressure. "Look," she said. "I was high. I'd taken... all kinds of stuff and I had no idea what I was saying. I don't even remember saying it."

Hammond nodded, thin lips pressed together. "But you did. You did, Alexandra, and I find that very interesting indeed."

She wondered dully what they would do with her. Were they going to ask her to identify her accomplice, the boy in the George Bush mask? Would they offer her a deal if she did? She considered lying, giving them the first name she could think of. If she made it common enough there'd probably be a boy at the school in Iowa who had it. But that would be like an admission of guilt and she wasn't ready for that. She was innocent, and some part of her that still believed in the pledge of allegiance and America the Brave and all that shit, thought that ought to count for something.

"You want to know what I think happened?" Hammond said. "Those drugs - whatever it was you took - opened a doorway in your mind, and for a brief moment you were in the spirit world, where time has no meaning."

Alex stared at him, dumbstruck. "You think
what
?"

"There really was a broadcast about that school on NBC the night you called. And when you saw it in that state, you saw... well, to say the future would oversimplify things. You saw the psychic scar on the spirit world that the events to come had left."

It would be easier to think that he was crazy, but there was no hint of madness in his pale eyes and when she looked across at PD he nodded encouragement and agreement.

"OK," she said. "Right. So you're saying I
didn't
have anything to do with that shooting. So why the hell have you brought me here?"

Hammond reached across the table, resting his dry, skeletal hand against hers. "You're a spirit traveller, Alexandra, the first of your generation. That makes you very rare and very valuable indeed. In the right hands and with the right training you could be an enormous asset."

PD leaned forward, resting his large, blunt-fingered hand against her other wrist, so that she was caught between the two men. She was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how much larger than her they both were. She felt the quiet strength of their hands and for the first time noticed the bulge of the jacket at PD's hip, the tell-tale shape of a handgun beneath it.

PD followed the direction of her gaze. "I told you I won't hurt you, kid," he said.

"That's the last thing we want," Hammond said. "Our aim today is to recruit you."

She jerked back, pulling her hands from beneath theirs. "
Recruit
me? I'm sixteen!"

"Oh, we'd want you to finish your schooling, of course," Hammond said. "You wouldn't enter active service for a few years yet - though we'd train you in the interim, and perhaps make occasional use of your unusual abilities. What do you say, Miss Keve?"

Her chair scraped shrilly against the tiles as she stood. "No! More no than you can possibly imagine! You're crazy, this is crazy and even if it wasn't there's no way I'm working for the federal fucking government. I've got thirty million dollars in trust - I'm not planning on working at all!"

Hammond leaned back in his chair and she couldn't pinpoint what shifted in his face, but suddenly it didn't look friendly or avuncular at all. "I'm not sure you fully understand the situation here. We have evidence - quite solid evidence, I imagine, since the search warrant on your house was executed a few minutes ago - that you've been engaging in illegal activities. We also have testimony from several of your friends that you have, on more than one occasion, supplied them with controlled substances. I don't have to tell you that's a felony. How do you think you'd enjoy prison, Alexandra - with or without your thirty million dollar trust fund?"

Alex took in a deep, shuddering breath. "You're telling me I don't have a choice."

"There's always a choice," PD said. "You just have to decide if it's worth paying the price for making the tough one."

But Alex couldn't go to prison. She tried to picture it, the shame and the boredom and the fear - every woman in there knowing her father was a judge. Her life would be over, maybe literally, definitely metaphorically. She tried to imagine Jenna standing by her, or Ryan or any of her friends, but she knew that they wouldn't. Their very complicity in her crime would drive them away from her. And her dad would be so stern and cold and disapproving, and her mom would say all the right things to the press and nothing at all to her.

Her knees felt suddenly weak and she let herself sink back into her chair. "You win," she said bitterly. "If you want me, you've got me."

Hammond smiled wide. "I'm pleased to hear it. Welcome to the Bureau of Counter-Rational Warfare, Alexandra."