There was a red plastic box on the floor, below the truck’s open rear door. She stepped up on it, feeling elephantine in the white bootees, and closed the door behind her.
Darkness, instantly replaced by a weird green half-light.
“I’m processing us a shitty excuse for night vision,” Eunice said. “Sit on that pallet,” the cursor indicating where, “on the folded tarp.”
“Kid who had the money’s Latino? I couldn’t tell.”
“Moldovan. Goes on the street by Mig, for Miguel. His Spanish is so good they think he’s Colombian. Joke is, it’s”—*MiG*—“an illegal, pretending to be a less exotic flavor of illegal. Get on the pallet. Virgil’s ready to go.”
She heard the driver-side door thump shut, up beyond the windowless bulkhead, then the ignition. She stepped onto the wooden pallet and squatted, propping herself up, gloved hands behind her.
“This won’t shift around,” Eunice said, the cursor indicating strapped sheets of marble, sloping up and out on either side.
Virgil reversed, turning, then started up the ramp. Stopped. Sound of the white gate opening. Then up again, to Fremont.
“Check this,” Eunice said, opening a feed straight up, evidently from the microdrone on the roof.
Verity, remembering the view from the top of the park, Eunice tagging drones above the Financial District, thought she saw one now, above them. “Drone?”
“National Enquirer,” Eunice said. “Here’s their feed.”
A white rectangle, in SoMa traffic. The top of this truck, Verity guessed. “Nobody’s thought you might be you yet, but one of the hardhats flagged you as possible scandal material, going in. And they know Caitlin’s been in New York.”
“Hate ’em,” Verity said. Eunice replaced the _Enquirer_’s feed of the truck’s roof with their drone again, barely visible against cloud. Then the feed closed, leaving her in blurry green undarkness. “That guy, the Moldovan…”
“Sevrin,” Eunice said.
“You got him working for you between my turning you on, yesterday afternoon, and us going up in the park?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s that even possible?”
“Analyzed a shitload of darknet chat, about shifting amounts of cash in the Bay Area. Boy stood out. I got in touch, struck a deal, put him on retainer.”
“For part of the money?”
“That was just what we needed for one cash-only transaction. By the time I was in touch with him, I’d figured how to access serious money.”
“He’s a criminal?”
“Financial services,” Eunice said, “but on the street side.”
The truck stopped and reversed, turning. Virgil killed the engine. She heard men’s voices. Spanish.
“Get up,” Eunice said.
Verity did, clumsy in the silicosis suit. She heard Virgil open the driver-side door, then he was at the back, opening that, just as Eunice showed her a feed of three men in tan jumpsuits, from above, clustered around the van’s left front fender. A fourth brought a flat gray rectangle, lay down on it, then scooted under the front chassis.
“How are you?” Virgil asked.
“Okay.” She saw upright red toolboxes with drawers, behind him. Swung herself down.
He loosened the drawstring at the edge of the suit’s hood, drew the hood back. “Hold your breath,” he said, then unfastened the mask’s straps and removed it. “Okay to breathe.” She did, finding the odor of petroleum distillates surprisingly welcome. He unzipped the front of the suit, stepped behind her, and held the fabric at the shoulders, allowing her to shrug her way out. “I’m standing on the edges of the bootees,” he said. “Step forward and your shoes will come out.” She did.
“So. The Singapore deal fell through,” he said, behind her.
“Eunice’s advice.”
“Know why?”
“She had documents. All I know.”
The beige Fiat she’d seen on Valencia gleamed in the other bay, looking like it had just been washed and polished.
Virgil stepped from behind her, the suit draped over his left arm, mask in his right hand. “Good seeing you again.”
“You too, Virgil.”
“Take care of yourself.” He turned and walked toward the sunlight, the voices speaking Spanish.
Eunice’s Moldovan, Modigliani-thin, stepped from behind the Fiat. He did have the goatee, she saw, but it was so short as to barely be there. “Sevrin.”
“Verity,” he said. He opened the front passenger door for her, she got in, he closed it. “Head on knees, because they always have cameras. I fasten seatbelt behind you, silence alarm.”
She did, hearing the buckle click behind her.
18
Pandaform, Tripartite
Netherton, seated on the floor, watched Thomas gurgle at the nanny. Pandaform now, tripartite, each of its three resulting units was identically adorable. Prior to having Thomas, he supposed, he’d have found this gently bumbling trio no more agreeable than Ash’s tardibot, but now it delighted Thomas, and for that he thought the better of it.
“A lovely boy, Wilf,” Lowbeer said, from the kitchen table, where Rainey was pouring tea. “Has your mother’s eyes.”
Lowbeer having never met his mother, Netherton assumed she’d checked whatever Akashic record for eye color. It hadn’t occurred to him that Thomas’s eyes were particularly like his mother’s. “He has his own eyes,” he said, and rolled a plaid felt ball in his son’s direction. One third of the nanny lunged for it, toppling rotundly over in the process.
Neither would it have occurred to him to have Lowbeer up for tea. The invitation had been Rainey’s idea, her friend, at the last minute, having canceled their afternoon at the Tate.
“Wilf tells me,” Rainey said, putting down the teapot and taking the seat opposite Lowbeer, “that America, in your new stub, elected a woman president. Before Gonzalez. But that they aren’t necessarily that much happier than people were here, with the opposite outcome.”
“They don’t wake each day with renewed gratitude for that particular bullet having been dodged, no,” said Lowbeer, “but that’s simply human nature. Meanwhile, in a world still subject to the other key stressors in our shared history, and with a complexly leveraged international crisis, one potentially involving nuclear weapons…”
“Wilf,” Rainey said, sharply, “you haven’t mentioned that.”
“Only learned of it last night,” he said. “Didn’t want to tell you, last thing before bed.”
“What crisis?” she asked Lowbeer.
“One involving Turkey,” Lowbeer said, “Syria, Russia, the United States, and NATO. The new president finds herself in a position arguably worse than the one that confronted Kennedy in Cuba, in 1962. She has quite a solid grasp of brinkmanship, in my view, but the aunties’ best projections are quite grim.” Lowbeer stirred her tea. “You’re in crisis management yourself, Rainey.” She sipped. “As well as making an excellent pot.”
“Harrods Afternoon,” Rainey said.
“I’ve just sent you a précis of the crisis,” Lowbeer said. “Your sense of things would be most welcome, should you care to read it.”
“Thank you,” said Rainey.
Thomas began to cry then, rather halfheartedly, so Netherton moved to pick him up. The pandaforms, in rolling out of his way, became more spherical than he imagined any actual panda could.