Jennifer Government: A Novel (21 page)

“Infiltrator!” Bill’s voice echoed from the sleeping quarters. “Will you guys hurry up, there’s a goddamn Government infiltrator in here trying to kill me!”

Billy heard keys rattling. Someone, or more likely some people, were unlocking the front door. He got to his feet, fell over, then stood up again. The bathroom door was a long way away. He staggered forward and grabbed hold of the doorway.

Bill was assembling a gun on one of the bunks. It was an FN M249 automatic, if Billy wasn’t mistaken: not very accurate over long range, but pretty much guaranteed to chop him into pieces from ten feet away. Bill raised it. Billy took the only evasive action he could and dropped to the floor. The woodwork exploded above his head.

The front door popped open. Four men in combat fatigues stormed in. They were carrying submachine guns.

“Infiltrator,” Billy croaked, and pointed at Bill.

They opened fire, and Bill backflipped across the room. For a second, Billy thought Bill must be incredibly acrobatic. Then he realized, and turned away.

“Are you all right?” an NRA man said to him, and another shouted, “Medic! We need a medic in here!”

“Ag,” Billy said, and slept for a while.

Hack felt her touch his hair. He felt her hand on his face. “Violet? Violet!”

“Shh,” Claire said. “It’s just me.”

He struggled awake. “What time—”

“It’s just after six. There’s a phone call for you. It’s Violet.”

Hack threw back the covers. Relief washed through him. Violet was alive! He ran to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver. “Hello? Violet?”

“Hi.” She sounded small and far away. There was a lot of background noise, as if she was in a car on a busy freeway. “I can’t talk long. I’m calling from an airplane.”

“A what?”

“I just wanted to tell you I’ll be away a while. I got a job.”

“What airplane?”

“I’m going to London.”

“London?” He felt confused.

“Yes.”

“But…how come…when are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a couple of weeks.”

“
Weeks?”

“I sold my software. To ExxonMobil.”

“Oh, Violet, that’s great! How did—”

“I have to go. I’ll call again later.”

“Wait! How come you didn’t call before?”

“I’ve been busy. I had to go to Dallas.”

“Dallas?”

“Hack, I have to go.”

“Why didn’t you call me from Dallas?”

“I’m calling you now, aren’t I? Come on, don’t dick me around.”

“I’m not dicking you around.” Hack heard the whine in his voice. He turned his back on Claire, who was waiting in the doorway. “I just think you could have called so I didn’t have to worry you’d been killed.”

“You know, forget I called. I thought you might be happy for me.”

“I am, Violet, but—”

“You’re like a rope around my legs, you know? Everything I do, you try to hold me back. It’s too much.”

“Violet, I’ve never held you back! We’ve lived on my income for a year!”

The phone clicked in his ear.

“Violet? Violet?”

Hack couldn’t move. After a while he felt Claire’s arms encircle his waist, hugging him from behind. “You okay?”

“She’s…”He couldn’t speak.

“She doesn’t deserve you, Hack,” Claire said softly. “She never did.”

H
ack went in to work, but he couldn’t concentrate. He spent most of the day staring out the window and chewing on his pen. So many things had turned out lately to not be what Hack thought. First there was Violet, who was neither as affectionate nor as dead as he’d believed. Then there were the things Claire’s hippie friends had said, things that made more sense than he really wanted them to. Like how he was being exploited by Nike. That was truer than any of them knew.

But most confusing was Claire. It was possible she was just being nice to him, Hack knew. Claire was sweet. But it was also possible she still cared for him. It was possible she’d never stopped caring for him, the whole time he’d been with Violet. That thought kept running around and around in his head.

“Hey, Hack,” a woman across the aisle said. “You still with us?”

“What?”

“You’re staring at nothing.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes, I’m fine.”

She rolled her eyes. Hack felt annoyed. He was sitting right here, did she think he couldn’t see her? No one respected Hack at Nike. No one respected him anywhere.

He stood up. “I’m going to get going.”

She looked startled. “It’s only five o’clock.”

“Yeah, well,” Hack said. “I’m still going.” He had things to do.

T
he cabdriver thought it was pretty funny, Hack not knowing where his own car was. Hack was having trouble seeing the humor in the situation, but that might have been because it was costing him a buck a minute to uselessly circle the airport parking lot. Then it occurred to him that Violet might not have driven herself here at all: she sure hadn’t paid for her own plane ticket. He had the cab take him to the ExxonMobil building and walked up to reception. “Excuse me, where’s your visitor’s parking?”

“To use visitor’s parking, you need to book ahead, sir.” The receptionist smiled sympathetically.

“I don’t want to use it,” Hack said. “I just want to know where it is.”

“But, sir, there’s no point in me telling you where it is unless you’ve booked.”

“But I—oh, fine,” Hack said. He would wander around until he found it. He started to walk away. The receptionist said: “Oh—are you the owner of a red Toyota?”

He stopped. “Yes.”

“We had that towed.”

“Towed where?”

“I’m not sure… there’s a firm we use, you’ll need to call them.” She slipped a card across the desk.

“Can I use your phone?”

She looked at him doubtfully. Hack resisted the urge to drop his eyes. Instead he met her gaze with what he hoped was force and natural authority. “Um…sure,” the receptionist said. She slid the phone across the desk. “I really shouldn’t let you, though.” She smiled.

“Thanks.” He tried not to show his surprise. What a reaction! Hack had never gained such results in his life. There was something to this assertiveness stuff. “I won’t be long.”

“Take as long as you need,” the receptionist said.

T
he tow truck company would give Hack’s car back only if he came out to their lot, showed them some ID, and paid them five hundred dollars. That wasn’t such a great development. Hack didn’t have five hundred dollars, not even close. The man from the towing company wouldn’t budge no matter how much force and natural authority Hack used.

Still, he felt upbeat on the cab trip back to Claire’s. He felt like he’d discovered something important. People like John Nike hadn’t been pushing him around for no reason, Hack realized: he had let them do it. He’d
expected
them to do it. Well, all that was going to change. Hack was going to take control.

Claire wasn’t home yet. Hack sat on the sofa and jiggled his leg. He couldn’t wait to talk to her. He wanted to ask about that group of hers. He wanted to know if they did more than just talk.

Violet pushed END CALL on the airphone. It had a long cord that was meant to retract into her seat, but she couldn’t get it to work. She caught Nathaniel ExxonMobil looking at her across the aisle. “Trouble at home?”

“It’s fine,” Violet said. She didn’t want to talk to Nathaniel right now.

“It’s hard for your loved ones to understand why you have to leave them. Why you have to do certain things. That’s something I’ve learned.”

“Things are fine.” She found the right button. The phone retracted.

“You didn’t tell him about the deal?”

Violet looked down at the contract. It gave ExxonMobil full use of her software, plus her services to activate it. It gave Violet, if her product worked, just under three million dollars. “It’s nothing to do with him. This is mine.”

“All right,” Nathaniel said, and returned to his journal.

I
t was raining in London. Violet cupped her hands and peered out the windows, but all she could see through the tint and fog were gray silhouettes of low buildings. She reached for the control to wind them down, but Nathaniel’s hand closed over hers. “Sorry. Not possible.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to be seen. You can do the tourist thing after you’ve hit Shell.”

“When’s that?”

He looked at his watch. “Three hours.”

“Oh.” She felt her gut tighten.

“Everything will work out,” Nathaniel said. “Just you wait and see.”

“You
don’t have to go in there.”

“Neither do you. Do you want to back out of the contract?”

Violet looked away. She didn’t like Nathaniel very much. “No.”

V
iolet was the only tech in the group. She’d been briefed on the server they’d gain access to, but even so, she was no Solaris expert. If she got lost in the operating system, all she had to rely on was a headset and some guys in the London ExMo headquarters. Violet thought it should be the other way around: ExMo techs going in while she sat in an air-conditioned building with a radio.