‘Okay, thanks for that, Wales,’ she said. ‘If anything else turns up, especially from Darwin, I’d like to know. And if someone could pass Colonel Murdoch’s thanks on to Colvin, that’d be good. He put himself out for us. I have no idea what it all means, but Darwin’s a hell of a long way from Fort Hood. Even further from Kansas City. And I’m going to need your help here in the next couple of hours.’
‘Just give me a second,’ he said. ‘I’ll get my paper and pencil and get started on the laundry list.’
*
‘You’re sure about this?’
Concern furrowed the brow of General Tusk Musso, USMC (retired). His office was much less grand than that of his opposite number over in the Hood. Unlike in Blackstone’s lair, there was no sign he had ever served in the military. Just pictures of his family on the desk. A woman and two boys Caitlin knew had Disappeared.
‘The sooner I do it, the sooner I can get out of this graveyard and go home, General.’
Musso sat back and regarded her with a contemplative air. ‘So your home isn’t here anymore? America, I mean - not Temple, of course.’
‘It’s where the heart is, sir,’ she said, being careful not to stare at the pictures of his dead family, even though, as the only adornment in the spartan office, their images drew the eye. She wondered if a day went by when he didn’t think of them. The same way she didn’t think of Bret or Monique.
Probably not. Musso seemed like a good man, and he had probably been a much better father than she was a mother.
‘Can’t argue with that,’ he agreed, apparently speaking to her private thoughts. ‘Are they letting you stay in camp over at the Hood?’
‘As if I’d want to,’ she replied. ‘They might have some surveillance rigs over there actually worth the money they spent on them.’
Her Siemens handset lay on Musso’s desk, the screen lit up, displaying an image of one of the bugs in her room. It sat squatting between them like a poisonous metal spider. The director of the Federal Center couldn’t stop his gaze drifting back towards it. Even though Caitlin had used the cell phone to scan his office, and declared it clean, she could tell that the former Marine had been rocked by the revelation of a traitor somewhere within his command. He was being very circumspect now, as if he thought Mad Jack Blackstone himself was listening to every word. Caitlin. however, had more faith in her equipment and in TDF security’s general lameness.
‘I’ll have more freedom of action if I’m not right under their noses,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of accommodation in Killeen. I’ve asked them to find me a room over there.’
‘They’ll be all over you like a cheap Chinese suit,’ he said, frowning at the cell phone.
‘Just a day at the office, sir, and hopefully it won’t even be necessary, except as cover. If I can get in and out tonight, Colonel Murdoch will be on a scheduled flight three days from now, with McCutcheon and Blackstone waving her off at the airport.’
‘And if that doesn’t pan out?’
Caitlin paused. Just long enough to feel her heart beat once.
‘I’ll get out, with the data.’
Musso leaned back in his chair, looking tired. ‘In a way, I hope you fail,’ he said.
She looked at him, tilting her head in an unspoken query.
‘I think Blackstone is genuinely seeking rapprochement,’ he explained, eyeing the file that filled his in-tray.
In there was everything McCutcheon had on the South American Federation’s op in Florida. Or at least, everything he said he had. There may have been intelligence he’d held back to avoid exposing any further TDF ops outside Texas. Nonetheless, Blackstone had agreed to hand over the captured infiltrators to a team of federal marshals who were scrambling to fly down from KC by the end of the day.
‘I can’t say I’m happy about this other bullshit,’ Musso said, nodding at her cell phone. ‘But I can understand it. Mad Jack seems genuine in his paranoia about Morales. He’s going to want any kind of leverage he can get with Seattle’s man, or woman. You being Echelon, I’m sure you’d understand.’
Caitlin smiled. ‘My first field assignment was bugging the French and EU trade ministers at a GATT meeting. Long time ago. In a galaxy far, far away.’
‘Yeah,’ grunted Musso. He pointed at the Siemens. ‘I’m still going to have to deal with this. Bring in the FBI, I suppose. But I’ll leave it until you’re gone.’
‘That’d be a big help, sir. And if you could organise my stunt double too?’
‘No problem. We can use Amy, the waitress from the other night. She did good with McCutcheon and I trust her. She fought in New York. Re-enlisted right after, when the TDF recruiters were really trawling for custom. Sign-on bonuses, free houses, transfer of benefits, everything. But she’s a believer.’
‘You don’t have to sell me,’ she said. ‘Before I used her on McCutcheon, I had Vancouver run her through the filter. She’s clean, as far as they could tell.’
At this, one of Musso’s eyebrows climbed towards the ceiling. ‘I see. And did you run me through your filters as well?’
‘You bet. I’d run everyone, if I had the time and resources. But I don’t. And so this shit happens.’ Her turn to nod towards the augmented phone she’d used to sniff out the bugs in her quarters when she first arrived.
Musso appeared to take no lasting offence at having been vetted by Echelon. Caitlin found him an easy man to work with. A lot of military people held her profession in low regard, but Tusk didn’t seem to be the sort to judge.
‘I’m going to have to revise your final report,’ he said. ‘Colonel Murdoch’s, that is. I don’t think Blackstone is right about Morales being an immediate threat. But I think maybe we do have to take him a little more seriously. That Federation special forces team in Florida wasn’t an invading horde, but it’s a factor we need to plug in. I’m afraid the President needs to know about that, and that Governor Blackstone has his own SF teams wandering around the countryside too.’
‘If you tell him now, you blow my cover,’ she said, suddenly worried that Musso’s boy scout gene was going to bring them all undone.
‘No, not necessarily. After all, it’s my job to act as liaison to Fort Hood. This is exactly the sort of information I’m supposed to pass back. It would draw more attention if I didn’t and Mad Jack decided to get on the phone and yell at the President for ignoring him again.’
‘So you’re going to lie?’
‘I’m going to tell the truth, but not the whole truth. In my experience the President cares little for briefings by military officers. He can hardly keep their ranks in his head, let alone their names. He just wants the job done. I’m sure I can shade Colonel Murdoch into insignificance for now. But I can’t make this Florida thing go away. Not with it sending the Governor bugshit.’
Musso shook his head and looked as though he was disgusted with himself.
The great game, Caitlin. It never ends, does it? We have our own people sniffing around the Federation all the time, I’m sure.’
She maintained a studied neutrality at that.
‘Who knows,’ he continued, ‘even if it’s paranoid bullshit, it might be enough for Mad Jack and Kipper to put aside their differences. The enemy of my enemy might just make us friends. Something like that. I’ve already sent a preliminary briefing note through to Jed Culver and he’s on my case for more detail. And your report.’
A headache began to form behind Caitlin’s eyes.
‘That could be tricky. Seeing as how I’m not really a USAF colonel.’
‘The tangled webs we weave, Agent Monroe.’
She breathed out heavily. Once this mission was done with, she planned to cut her entanglements, but it would be interesting to see what happened to Culver if she couldn’t give him Blackstone’s head on a plate. The Colonel Murdoch jacket wasn’t meant to be worn in earnest. It was thin cover for a quick and dirty job. And there was always Wales too, of course. Her former controller would go down with Jed Culver and that she did care about.