“You called it when you said it’s a ghost story. When he runs down those docs for you, I think you’ll see I just saved a bunch of your bacon.”
“Thank you,” he said, “assuming this is all true, Verity’s story and now this. Which I now effectively do. Where do we go from here?”
“Verity and I go back to the Mission, preferably minus the gig-economy surveillance crew who tailed us over here.”
“If they know where I’m staying,” Verity asked, “and we’re going back to Joe-Eddy’s, why’s it matter?”
“We aren’t going straight back to Joe-Eddy’s,” Eunice said. “There’s somewhere I need you to be seen, in order for somebody to have the time to finish doing something somewhere else. That means getting out of here unobserved, to somewhere we won’t be seen transferring to a car I’ll send.”
“Virgil can manage that,” Stets said with a questioning look for Verity.
“Okay by me,” she said.
He thumbed a single key.
16
COTS
What you describe, Ainsley, would’ve been NGP,” said Clovis Fearing, in Victorian mourning dress Netherton imagined Ash would fancy, though she’d accessorize it more perversely.
Fearing’s face was a palimpsest of wrinkles and mottle, though looking younger, for all of that, than he remembered her. She was the only person he knew in London who addressed Lowbeer by her given name, though Flynne and others in the county all did.
“NGP?” asked Lowbeer.
“Next Generation Projection,” said Fearing, her teeth startlingly white. “Funded out of Special Operations Command, but managed by Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. Used a lot of COTS tech, Commercial Off the Shelf. Some of that was out of China Lake, Naval Air Weapons Station, which was early into swarming microdrones. With effort toward acquiring bleeding-edge hardware from Silicon Valley. That would have been DIUx, Defense Innovation Unit, Experimental.”
“Indeed,” said Lowbeer, eyebrows raised.
“Close?” asked Fearing, fixing Lowbeer with her sharp old eyes.
“Could you look for mention of the name Eunice?”
“Eunice?”
“In any related context, please.”
Fearing’s eyes rolled up, terrifying when entirely white, then down again. “That would be U-N-I-S-S,” she said. “UNISS. Closest match.”
“Meaning?”
“Untethered Noetic Irregular Support System,” Clovis said, clearly pleased.
“That’s extremely helpful, Clovis,” Lowbeer said. “Thank you so much. Would there be more?”
“No,” said Fearing. “Bit-rot’s been at all the likely archives, and I’ve cross-checked my own stock. Nothing on it, but it was definitely NGP.”
Netherton, finding none of this particularly interesting, was looking at the oversized bronze head of a bearded man, directly behind Fearing, its neck having been crudely severed from whatever figure it must once have topped.
“Lee,” said Fearing, noting the direction of Netherton’s gaze.
“Lee?”
“Robert E.”
The name meaning nothing to Netherton.
“You’ve been tremendously helpful, Clovis,” said Lowbeer, “but Netherton has parenting to see to, and I’ve promised not to keep him.”
“Delighted to see you again, Mrs. Fearing,” Netherton said.
“And you, Wilf,” Fearing said.
Netherton smiled, unhappy that she remembered his first name, then opened and held the shop door for Lowbeer. He followed her out, an antique bell jangling after them.
“I do still wish she hadn’t married that truly awful man,” said Lowbeer, Netherton recalling that Fearing was the widow of a long-dead MP, Clement Fearing, a figure from the jackpot whom Lowbeer viscerally despised.
“Your younger self in the county couldn’t find what she found?” Netherton asked.
“No.”
“Let me try in the county, then.”
“Anyone in mind?”
“Not yet,” Netherton said, though really he was thinking of Flynne’s friend Janice’s husband, Madison, an obsessive researcher of vintage Russian military aircraft.
“Please do,” said Lowbeer. “Now home to your little man, shall we?” She snapped her fingers, causing her car to decloak.
17
MiG
What did you just do?” Virgil asked, at the foot of the stairs to Caitlin’s tree-fort trailer. “Our team’s gone into crisis mode, but Stets just wants me to get you out of here. Haven’t been briefed yet on what’s happened.” He was holding what appeared to be a large hooded onesie, dingily white.
“Something about Singapore,” Verity said, “but it doesn’t have that much to do with getting me out.”
He stared at her. “Singapore.” Not a question.
“What’s this?” she asked, looking at the grubby white garment.
“Silicosis suit,” he said. He was wearing a safety vest and a fluorescent pink construction helmet. The suit he held seemed made of some cousin of Tyvek, with elasticized bootees of the same material. “Keeps the dust out. Put it on. I’ll help you.”
“Dust?”
“Marble dust. Truck’s in the garage. We use it to haul the stuff to a salvage yard in San Jose. Media know the truck, know the yard. So they’ll expect it to go there. Instead, we pull into a brake and muffler near here, on Eleventh, like we’ve got a problem. Back partially into one of the bays. Guys check under our front end while I let you out the back, out of sight. Get you out of the suit, and this,” handing her a goggled mask, muzzled with twin filtration units. “In the next bay, your PA has a vehicle waiting. You leave, immediately, and someone else drives to San Jose.”
The name PACO had been written across the mask’s forehead, with a silver paint pen, in faux-runic caps.
“Do I have to wear this?”
“Dust hazard’s real, but it also reduces the chance of you being recognized. Any hint you’re still involved with Stets would be Christmas for the tabloids. Want help with it?”
She managed by herself. It smelled, inside, of something synthetically fruity. He pulled up the suit’s white hood, cinching its edges down around the mask.
And then into the elevator, Eunice offering no thumbnails. “Butt-ugly,” Verity said, noticing the fleshy pink marble floor for the first time.
“We’ll replace it,” he said, behind her, “when the rest is out. The place was all like this.”
“Who owned it?” The door closed behind him and they began to descend.
“Stets bought it from a numbered corporation in the Bahamas. I thought he’d made a mistake, first time I walked in, but then they gave me a VR fly-through of Caitlin’s rebuild.”
A single thumbnail opened. Him again, the one she’d seen in the Fiat on Valencia, who’d then brought the pillow full of hundreds to Joe-Eddy’s. “Sevrin,” Eunice said. “Severin but minus the second e.” Seen now in what might be a passport photo, clinically unsmiling. Head almost shaven, with a tight little goatee she didn’t remember him having. “He’s in the muffler shop, to pick you up.” The elevator was slowing. The thumbnail blinked out.
“You’ll see the truck,” Virgil said. “Only vehicle there. Left rear door’s open, step up on the milk crate, step in, close it behind you. I’ll be with the crew who’re there, giving them something else to think about, then I’ll check that the rear door’s shut, drive us out.”
Drone I left with him is on top of the van. Other one’s back under your lapel.
She looked down, but with the suit on couldn’t see her lapels. The door slid open. She saw the rear of a tall white truck, one of its twin doors open. She stepped out, heading for it, Virgil to her right. Farther to her right, ahead, three men in vests and helmets were peering into a brightly lit opening in the white wall, within it what she first took to be the enlargement of a congested urban satellite view, then recognized as cable, conduit, components.