Wildfire (7 page)

"Not too much for you?" He smiled as his hands moved across the keyboard reflexively, saving his most recent corrections to the program.

"It was perfect, just perfect. There's just one problem."

"Oh, really, what's that?"

"Shooting it makes me horny," she whispered in a rough, feminine voice, stroking her right hand gently along the grizzled jowls of her mentor, lover, and fellow inner core conspirator. "I want to see the Wildfire."

"You're the ember. Light it," he whispered back, turning around in his chair as he brought his hands up and over her hips, and under her sweatshirt, to cup her small, firm breasts in his soft hands.

"Now?"

"No, later," he rasped as he picked her up and carried her over to the made-up daybed in the far corner of his cavelike office, a daybed that also served, on occasion, as an alternate desktop and bookshelf, as well as a place to wait and sleep when the projects were set into motion.

It was her wish to be known only as "Ember." Because of the imagery, certainly, but also because the leader of a clandestine and fanatical group such as Wildfire
had
to remain anonymous if she wished to maintain her position . . . and her freedom.

Of the twelve members of the inner core, only Harris and one other knew her real name. But Leonard Harris, a.k.a. Eagle, had long since instituted the use of the code names. Especially since, according to the group's cherished and often repeated parables that Harris himself had created, it would be the eagle who carried the ember to the chosen place of ignition, where the wildfire would begin.

It was a role that Harris—an inveterate loner, escapist, and dreamer— had longed for all his life; and one that he had sworn to carry out, no matter what the cost.

They made love in the manner they did everything else: loudly and passionately and hurriedly. Aware, as always, that while their emotional energy might be limitless, their resources were not. And because their self-imposed mission was so vast and so overwhelming, there was little time for this sort of diversion. But the heated and twisted emotions that drove both of them forward with such furious intensity also—and inevitably—drove them to each other, like fuel and flame.

Finally they lay next to each other in the darkness, naked and sweating and gasping for breath.

"You could set the whole thing into motion, torch it off, just like that," he whispered in a hoarse voice.

"It would be beautiful." She smiled. "Find us a way."

"Don't I always?"

She turned to face him, her long, slender frame stretched out past his shorter, stockier, sixty-three-year-old body. It was when they lay together like this that they realized how different they were from each other, so completely different. It was only in their fevered eyes and emotions that they were the same.

"Yes,"
she whispered, "you do. You always do."

"Tell me where you want to be. I'll get you there," he promised.

"I can see us soaring high above that place, circling, waiting for the moment," she said in a raspy whisper. "And then, finally, you release me . . . and I'm falling."

"I can see you falling," he said. "A glowing ember in the darkness, dropping away, becoming smaller and smaller—and then everything below—the entire world—erupts into a billowing flame that roars outward in all directions."

"Driven by the wind."

"Yes, darling, that's right." He nodded solemnly.

'You will be the wind," she whispered into his neck, "and I will be the fire."

And their passion rose once again.

Later, much later, when they were dressed again and sitting on the remade bed, leaning against each other, her chest against his back, she spoke softly into his ear.

"Eric wants to see you."

"I know." Harris nodded, balancing his chin on his hands and his elbows on his knees as he stared off into the dimly lit darkness of his large, isolated office.

"He says he's sorry."

"He should be. It was a stupid mistake."

"To use Crowley?"

"No, to send him in the first place."

She sighed. "It wasn't all his fault. I encouraged him."

"I know," he said softly.

"But it's so much money," she said after a while.

"Pieces of paper and bits of data, all meaningless." He shrugged.

"Meaningless after, but essential before," she offered, not aggressively this time, because the argument was long past. And it was never a question of the end, only the means.

"Yes, you're right." He nodded. "It's just the timing, and the fact that this Riser can be so volatile and so dangerous."

"But you can handle him, can't you?"

"Yes, I can handle him," Harris said, confident, because he was one of the acknowledged game masters of his era, but uneasy nonetheless, because this time the game was real. He'd already decided upon a strategy and had set it into motion, and he wondered if this was the time to tell her. He decided it was.

"But to do so," he went on smoothly, "we're going to have to make some changes in the game plan."

He could feel her stiffen behind his back.

"What kind of changes?" she whispered softly, but he could sense the edge to her voice.

"Turn Riser against the agents too."

'You mean directly?"

"Yes."

As the seconds went by, he felt her torso muscles start to relax as she considered the possibilities.

"It would keep him focused, wouldn't it?"

"And busy." Harris nodded. "Much less time to focus on us."

"What about the cost factor?"

"The entire scenario becomes much simpler for him this way. There's no reason why he should want more money. If anything, we should get a discount."

"It makes sense." She finally nodded. "When can you set it into motion?"

He remained silent, staring out across the darkened room.

"You already did it, didn't you?"

He nodded slowly.

"You knew I wouldn't object," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I knew you wouldn't
care,
one way or the other," Harris said matter- of-factly. "And you don't, do you?"

"No," she whispered softly into the back of his shoulder. "Should I?"

"The agents are just pieces on the board." Harris shrugged. "Which means they're expendable, just like everyone else."

She paused, and then said: "But what about Eric?"

"What about him?"

"He thinks they're the white hats, the heros'—the ones who defeated Maas and Wolfe and Abercombie."

"Through the eyes of a child." Harris smiled.

"But you'll explain it to him, make him understand the ... necessity?" she said insistently.

Harris nodded.

"Please don't be angry with him . . . about Crowley," she whispered.

"I'm not angry. Just disappointed."

"Don't forget, we need him. I wish we didn't. I wish we could do it ourselves, just you and I, without all the others. But we can't. I can't," she added, with only the slightest discernible trace of bitterness.

"I know." Leonard Harris nodded, all too aware of her personal demons. And then: "When will he be here?"

She looked down at the luminous glow of her watch.

"In a half hour or so, maybe less."

"Then you'd better get going," he said reluctantly.

"I'll be back soon."

"When?"

"Soon," she said, pressing herself tightly against his bowed back as she bit gently at his ear. "Very soon."

Twenty minutes later Leonard Harris was back at work, monitoring one of the three computer systems on his extended workstation, when he heard a hesitant knock on the small metal door at his back.

After looking up and checking the small monitor overhead, Harris reached under the workstation table to his right and released the lock mechanism. Of the twelve inner-core members of Wildfire, only Eagle and Ember had keys to that particular door.

"Hello, Eric," he said when the young man closed the door behind him and walked over to stand next to Harris's desk. "Hi."

"Have a seat."

"Thanks."

By contrast to Harris, he was a tall, slender, dark-haired, and well- groomed young man in his early twenties. He sat there looking uncertain, as if not quite knowing how to start the serious part of the conversation.

Then he finally said: "Heard anything from Crowley?"

"No, nothing yet." Harris shrugged as he gestured with an open hand at the blank computer screen at his far left.

The youthful newcomer looked at his watch. "What time were they scheduled to meet?"

"Three-thirty, at the Commons."

"It's ten after five. Crowley should have checked in by now."

"If
the meeting was successful, he should have reported in by four- thirty at the latest," Leonard Harris agreed. "Since he hasn't, I think we have to assume that the meeting was a failure."

The young man blinked. "What?"

"A failure," Harris repeated. "It's not all that surprising, really. In fact, if anything, it was almost predictable."

"Why do you say that?"

There was a dangerous edge to the young man's voice. An edge that hadn't been there earlier when they had first discussed the issue. Harris was pleased. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, after all.

"Because we negotiated a deal with an extremely dangerous individual, and then we sent Crowley out to break it." The heavyset man shrugged.

The use of the word
we
rather than the more accurate and appropriate
you
immediately caught Eric's attention. "Yes, so?" he said after a moment.

Harris thought he could detect a little bit of the more customary arrogance in the young man's voice.

"People like our Mr. Riser may not be accustomed to having their contracts renegotiated," he said quietly, watching the young man's face.

Come on, kid, stay on your feet,
the baldish executive and acknowledged game master thought to himself.
Don't disappoint me. This is where it starts to get interesting.

"But he's a businessman, just like anybody else, right?"

"Yes, I suppose, at some level, he is just a businessman." Harris shrugged.

"Then all this is bullshit," the youth said insistently. "Because when you get right down to it, this is nothing more than a business deal, and business deals get renegotiated all the time when circumstances change. That's the way things work. This Riser character ought to understand that, for Christ's sake! And after all, five hundred thousand for each phase is a hell of a lot of money for what we're asking him to do. I mean, we could have hired a guy off the street for a hundred times less."

"And we would have gotten exactly what we paid for," Harris responded calmly. "Don't forget, we've asked him to perform an extremely complex and dangerous mission. And as much as anything else, we're paying for his technical expertise, which we will
not
find on the street, no matter how hard we look."

"I still think we're being robbed, but I understand your point," the young man grumbled. And then, after a moment: "So what do you think happened to Crowley?"

Harris shrugged. "My guess would be that Riser took offense at his proposal."

The new look that suddenly appeared on Eric's face caused Leonard Harris to worry for a brief moment. If facial expressions were any basis for judgment, his youthful assistant seemed to be considering this fairly obvious possibility for the first time. And if that was the case, Harris told himself, then Wildfire could be in serious trouble.

"Do you really think Crowley might have blown the deal?"

Harris chewed at his lower lip. His fingers tapped absentmindedly against the edge of the keyboard as he stared again at the dark, blank screen.

"Given Riser's rather fearsome reputation, and Crowley's youthful inexperience, I would say that's a very real possibility." He finally nodded.

"So what does that mean for us?"

"Among other things," Harris said, "it may very well mean that we have to start over again."

"Christ, Leo, we can't screw this whole deal up now! We need Riser. How the hell are we going to do it without him?"

Leonard Harris sighed, more out of fatigue than irritation. He had spent the last three hours monitoring the computer terminal in this small, isolated basement room himself, because a task like this couldn't be assigned to an underling. Especially an underling like Eric.

He was tempted to snap back at his young assistant, to remind him that it was he—Eric—who had sent Crowley out on what might still turn out to be an absolutely disastrous mission. But Harris didn't do that, because there wasn't any point in it. Eric was one of the essential members of the inner core of Wildfire. One of those cold and ruthless business executive types who had been trained to use their inherited wealth, parental influence, and predatory skills to move up fast in a large and prestigious organization. He wouldn't listen.

From outward appearances, the young man looked like little more than a preppy wimp in his horn-rimmed glasses, school tie, button-down Oxford shirt, and casual deck shoes. But Harris knew better. He'd spent the last eighteen months functioning as Eric's mentor. Training him how to fit in. To rise up and swim with the big sharks. And how to make his early moves without being discovered and destroyed in the process.

Aggressive, arrogant, manipulative, suspicious, and very much accustomed to doing things his own way,
Harris thought with a smile. Not an easy subject, by any means, but he thought he'd done a good job with Eric. Or at least he hoped he had.

"Yes, of course we need Riser," Harris agreed. "Or someone like him. That goes without saying."

"So what are we going to do if Crowley
doesn't
check in?"

Instead of answering, Harris continued to tap his short, stubby fingers against the keyboard.

"The first thing to do would be to send someone up to Boston and find out what happened," he said after a moment.

"Are you sure that's wise?" the young man asked, more cautious now that he had begun to comprehend the nature of the risks involved.

"We'll have to know what happened in any case." Harris shrugged. "We can't leave a loose end like Crowley running around the neighborhood. Especially not now."