Crawlers (25 page)

And he’d deliberately not checked his E-mail or answered his cell phone or his hotel phone for two days. He had suspected he was about to be pulled off this thing. But he couldn’t let himself be cut loose from it till he was sure Quiebra was going to be all right, in the end. He couldn’t retire not knowing for sure.

Maybe he could just back off, and the heat would ease up.

No. These people in Quiebra were American citizens, at risk. He was supposed to protect them, not play God with their lives.

Fuck Facility Central anyway. He needed to
know
.

He kept moving at a brisk walk, which became a trot, till he was jogging toward the SUV, hitting the unlock button on his key-ring tab as he went. The car chirped in response, and he took the last three steps with long, fast strides, opened the door, started the car, and drove away, slamming the door en route.

It was a misty late afternoon. He hoped it’d rain; that would make a tail’s work harder. More likely one would be waiting outside the gates.

Stanner saw that the guard at the parking lot checkpoint was in his glass booth, answering the phone. Probably getting the word to put down the barrier, to keep Stanner in the lot till they could take him into custody.

But before the barrier could come down, Stanner had hit the street. He was driving away at twice the speed limit.

I swear, sometimes it seems like American intelligence can’t do anything right,
he thought disgustedly.
The Black Beret hadn’t even been
told I was to be held, till I was already on to it. They should’ve had it all
set up. It’s a wonder that sorry son of a bitch Ames didn’t walk away with
the entire Company files. What’s it been since then—years?—and they
haven’t learned dick.

He realized he was already thinking of the military-intelligence complex as they—not as we. He snorted and checked in his rearview.

If they had a tail on him already, he couldn’t spot it. Could be they were getting better. He’d lost the guys following him three times in the last two days, and it hadn’t always been easy. When the sky was clear they could spot him with satellites.

He regretted losing his satchel. He’d had it for fifteen, maybe eighteen years. There was nothing much in it he needed; there’d been some statistics about break-ins down in Silicon Valley. Big computer-chip thefts weren’t uncommon—the Russian mafia routinely sold stolen computer chips in bulk—but there’d been quadruple the usual number in the last few weeks. Chips and other cybernetic hardware taken; enhancement gear, most likely.

Then there was the bank. That big Quiebra bank job. The one no one knew about.

There’d been almost nothing about that in the media. Usually a bank job that thorough would’ve had reporters crawling all over the place. Not this time.

Theoretically, some of the liberal Democratic senators, and even a few Republican men of conscience, had put the stops on Project Truth—the CIA/Reagan administration term for a structured program of disinformation, using reporters, in the early 1980s.

After 9/11, the Justice Department was given carte blanche for reinstating control on the media. Ashcroft had gutted the FOIA, and the Pentagon proposed the Office of Strategic Influence under Brigadier General Worden—big taxpayer money for true and untrue propaganda. Money for lies, sometimes, to be spread internationally, to every medium, in aid of the war on terrorism. Publicly, the government had decided the OSI wasn’t necessary—but it existed nonetheless. The first lie put out by the “nonexistent” OSI was that the office didn’t exist. Irony as usual dogging intelligence.

Driving down the 101 to the Bay Bridge, slowing to not attract attention, Stanner reflected that he didn’t really blame the government much. After 9/11, the siege mentality was to some extent really justified. There was a sense that a major part of the world ranged against America—and that sense wasn’t entirely wrongheaded.

Still, who was to say the Pentagon wasn’t pulling strings on the media the same way Project Truth did, in the case of that bank in Quiebra? Certainly they went to great lengths to protect the Facility. Stupid to think they wouldn’t, really. They’d kept the satellite crash pretty quiet; he’d helped them do that himself.

He thought about Shannon. Where was she? Was she safe? Would they use her to bring him in, if he didn’t come in on his own? Maybe he should warn her. God, would she be pissed off.

Dad, how dare you drag me into your paranoid little world?

He looked into his rearview mirror. Was that dark blue Ford Taurus following him? Maybe. A man and woman, looking ever so disinterested—but changing lanes, not long after he did, only a few cars back.

He looked back at the road, had to swerve to stay in the lane. Shit. They might realize he’d been watching them.

Fuck ’em.
Let them follow till he got to the East Bay. He’d lose them in Berkeley. There were all those blocked-off streets he could use to throw them off, then he’d go over the hills, through Tilden Park, down into the back roads to Quiebra. He had a stop to make in Quiebra, before he went to the next level.

Somewhere in his Palm Pilot he had the home address of that Filipino commander in the Quiebra PD. Commander Cruzon.

The guy had been “out sick” the last week, when Stanner had gone to see him at the PD. This time he was going to Cruzon’s house. They were going to compare notes. Whether the little son of a bitch wanted notes compared or not.

Bentwaters. The bastard had better come through: He needed to get that EMP transmitter design.

But he’d take something along, next time he went to see Bentwaters. Like a silenced machine pistol.

He wondered, as he drove onto the Bay Bridge, when he’d unknowingly crossed the line from the Same Old Bullshit to being in SDS: Serious Deep Shit.

December 13, afternoon

Lacey looked at the little green screen on her cell phone. The phone seemed to be in touch with its server. The battery showed a full charge—and she hadn’t used it much since she’d charged it. But she’d tried four times, and the call just wasn’t going through.

She was at a small window table in the Cruller, in what passed for downtown Quiebra. Her latte sat in front of her, untouched. She stretched, then rested an elbow on the table, and it rocked on its uneven legs, so that the latte slopped over. She muttered a curse and dabbed at the milky brown puddle with her napkin. Too big a puddle. She dropped the napkin into it and watched it soak the coffee up. Absorbing the hot coffee into its papery blandness, making it part of itself.

She shivered and tried the cell phone again. It seemed to be calling through now. She put the phone to her ear and heard a rush of static and the odd, jangling words again, something like the confusion that had come out of Waylon’s frequency searcher. Then it was as if some atmospheric hand had lifted, and the line cleared; she heard it ringing.

“Hello?” It was Rueben’s voice.

She had almost married Rueben, before meeting the guy who was now her ex. A few weeks ago, she’d found herself wishing she’d stuck with Rueben. But now that things were getting serious with Bert, Rueben was back into the “handy ex-boyfriend” category— only, it was hard to think about relationships at all just now.

“Hi, Rueben! Can you hear me okay? Cell phone problems around here.”

“Lacey? Sure I hear you! Good to hear you, too. Hey, there was a rumor, uh, that you and—”

“Yeah, we broke up. I’m staying with . . . well, near my sister in Quiebra now. But, hey, did you get my package? My note with that, um, item, right?”

“What package? And what note?”

“I overnighted it to you. It’s a sort of odd little computer chip on a—well, it’s soldered to another device. It was in bubble wrap, inside the envelope with my note. And you’ve got that computer science doctorate, ought to be good for something.”

“No, I didn’t get anything from you. Why are you sending me odd little chips?”

“That’s a long story. But I was hoping you could help me figure out what the thing is. I mean, it seems to be some kind of—of I don’t know what.”

“Nothing came. Have you tried to track it?”

“Um, I’m a little nervous about doing that at this point. To tell the truth, I didn’t use my own name on the envelope. I used a nickname I thought you’d remember, and a fake address. I was nervous about this call, too, but I figure they can’t monitor everything.”

There was a long crackling pause. “Listen, are you okay? I mean, how about if I come and see you? Have you—I mean, uh, are you . . .”

“Am I getting paranoid, Rueben? Yes, I probably am. Maybe not paranoid enough, Rueben. That’s what I’m beginning to think. Especially now. They must have intercepted that package.”

Another staticky interval and she found herself staring at people going by on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop window. An elderly man, bent nearly hunchbacked, walked along with a younger woman, probably his daughter; they passed a middle-aged man with clubbed hair, a purple shirt and a silvery tie—a local real estate agent, going the opposite way.

“Lacey?”

Coming behind the real estate agent was a woman in blue jeans and Levi jacket, with long black hair and high cheekbones and black eyes—one of the local Indians. All of them seemed to glance at her, as they walked by. As if . . .

She shook her head. As if what?

“Lacey, yo.”

“Oh, sorry, Rueben.”

“I really think you should, uh—”

“Rueben? I’m going to be okay. Don’t come to Quiebra, whatever you do. I’ll call you back in a few days.”

Before he could argue, Lacey broke the connection.

Two rather overweight teenage girls carrying Taco Bell bags were passing now. They looked at her. As if . . .

Snap out of it,
she told herself.
Do something normal. Get some distance from it. Christmas shopping.

She got up and went out, waving to the chubby lady behind the counter. She walked into a wind that was misty but not cold; she strolled past a beautician’s shop, and then stopped in front of a small jewelry store. Maybe some earrings for Adair?

She went in and thought she must’ve mistaken the sign in the window. The jewelry counters were all empty, except for fragments, here and there; a single pearl earring lying askew next to what looked like a broken bracelet. Mostly just blank black velvet under the glass tops. Well, maybe they were changing all their stock over.

“Hello? Anyone home? Are you open?”

After a few moments she gave up and turned to go—but turned back when a woman came out of the back room. Late middle-aged, short and busty, elaborately coifed silver hair, blue eye shadow, jewel-rimmed glasses with an onyx-beaded croky. Her lipstick seemed smeared, and her makeup a bit blurred, as if she’d been crying.

“Yes?” the woman asked.

“Um, are you open? All your stock seems to be gone.”

The woman looked hazily at the display cases. “Yes. It’s all gone. We haven’t got any to put out. It’s gone.”

“Right before Christmas? You must’ve had one heck of a sale.”

“Oh, no. People just came and took it. They came and took it, you see, as ‘resources’ they said. They just took it. Stole it really.”

“Stole it! What did the police say?”

“The police?” She seemed to sway on her feet. She clutched at the glass top of a display case as if she was afraid she might fall. “A lot happened in one day. Wasn’t it amazing? You can’t call the police now. You’re not one of them, are you?”

Lacey swallowed. “One of who?”

The woman blinked hard, as if a harsh light struck her eyes, and stared down at the empty cases. “My husband tried to leave town— was going to talk to the state police. Said he’d be back yesterday, by noon. He hasn’t come back.”

And then she seemed to sink down, below the level of the display case. Lacey lost sight of her for a moment.

Lacey went and looked over the edge of the case. The woman was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, her legs cocked to one side, crying.

Lacey tried to think of what to do. “Oh, gosh, let me get you a doctor! Or—some family—someone—”

“No!” The woman looked up at her in sudden panic. Lacey could see the color draining out of her face. “
No,
please, for God’s sake, don’t call anyone!”

The woman scrambled to her feet and ran, stumbling in her hurry, into the back room, slamming the door behind her.

Lacey backed away from the display cases, and then turned, hurried out and down the street. She hurried against the wind, down a block, left a block, to the police station.

“This,” she muttered, as she stalked up to the station, “is bullshit. I’m going to find out what the fuck is going on.”

Inside, she found a man seated on the other side of the reception window. Not the woman who’d been there a couple of days ago, when Lacey had glanced through the window. A tanned fiftyish man with deep smile lines, maybe the faintest suggestion of a hair weave. But she knew him. Bert had introduced her when they’d run into him at the new bistro. It was the mayor—Mayor Rowse.

“Hello, Mr. Mayor. Are you, um, doing a police job, here? Or, just waiting for someone?”

“I’m filling in here,” Rowse said, smiling, cocking his head to one side. “Certainly.”

“Yes, well, that’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, not when the police are so very busy. Big project going on. Certainly. I was able to pitch in here. But how can I help you? Is there a problem somewhere? You wanted to report something?”

“Hm? Well . . .” She opened her mouth to tell him about the lady in the jewelry store. The woman’s husband, the theft.

But she couldn’t quite bring herself to say anything.

No, it wasn’t couldn’t; it was wouldn’t. She didn’t feel it was wise. She wasn’t sure why. The mayor just looked at her. As if . . .

She shook her head. “No, no, I just . . . wanted to say hello to the lady that was working here. We had a nice chat but, uh, I’ve got to get some—some shopping done. I’ll . . . talk to you later.”