Logan asked, “Are you through?”
Seth glared at him. “What do you mean, am I through?”
“With the self-pity routine? What the hell happened to the rebel who wanted me to help him take Manticore down? Manticore exposed, destroyed, Lydecker out of your life permanently... that’s your ‘best-case scenario.’ ”
Now Seth was just staring at him.
Logan met the boy’s gaze, steadily, knowing he had just jumped the ass of a killing machine who could reach out and snap his neck like a twig. And, if anything had been established thus far about Seth, it was the X5’s ability to perform homicide without a twinge of conscience.
Finally the silence was so terrible, Logan had to fill some of it.
He said, “You help me close down Kafelnikov, and find out where Sterling figures in this... and I promise, even if this lead is a cold one, you and I will find a way... either we’ll banish Manticore from the face of this earth, or I will call on all my powers and resources to relocate you safely, in a new life.”
Seth drew a deep breath, expelled it, and said, “Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Sorry I was such a whiny candyass brat... what can I say...” The boy shrugged. “... shitty upbringing.”
Logan risked a smile. “Yeah — somebody really spoiled you.”
Suddenly Seth exploded in laughter, and Logan laughed, too; the boy extended his hand.
“It’s a deal, partner,” Seth said.
“It’s a deal,” Logan echoed.
The two men shook hands.
“Okay,” Seth said, after a sip of coffee, “what about this famous computer disc?”
Logan sat down again. “Well, I’ve got my best cryptology program working on it. Could take ten minutes, ten hours, or ten days. There’s no way to know. But it will work. It’s never failed me yet.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“I haven’t slept in four days.” Seth followed this with a world-class yawn. “Can I crash on the couch?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Take the guest room.”
“Rad. Point the way.”
Logan showed his guest to the bedroom.
Seth flopped onto the bed, saying, “Call me when your computer has good news for us.”
“Will do.”
“And why don’t you catch some z’s? You look like shit, partner.”
Half a smile dimpled Logan’s lightly bearded cheek. “Manticore wasn’t big on tact, either, I see.”
“Isn’t that something you put on the teacher’s chair?”
The two smiled at each other... and, for the first time, felt like friends.
Donald Lydecker was livid.
Normally a man whose emotions were held in tight check, Lydecker — in a gray zippered jacket, black T-shirt and black jeans — stood in an FBI office in the Federal Building at Second and Madison, his temper taxed to its limits.
“You’re not going to help,” he said, “with a matter of national security?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Special Agent in Charge Gino Arcotta, seated behind a desk piled with work. “Not exactly.”
Arcotta was a thin, fit man of thirty-eight, his short hair black and curly, his angular face cleanly shaven, his brown eyes alert and sharp.
“What I said,” he continued, “is that I don’t have any men available to assist you, right now.”
“Perhaps I’m not making myself clear,” Lydecker said. “This is a matter of...”
“National security,” Arcotta said wearily, with just a touch of temper, himself. “Colonel, let me be perfectly clear...”
Richard Nixon, 1968, Lydecker thought.
“This office is manned by six agents, three on days, three on nights. That’s all the manpower Washington has allotted us... and even with that small a staff, we can’t stay within our budget.”
“My budget is tight, too. That doesn’t mean we shirk our responsibilities.”
Arcotta continued on, as if Lydecker hadn’t even spoken: “Now, of the three day-shift agents, two are investigating a bank robbery across town. All three night-shift agents are investigating a kidnapping and are at this moment...” He checked his watch. “... in the sixteenth hour of their tour.”
“Even one man would be helpful, Agent Arcotta.”
“Colonel, the last day-shift agent is me... and this desk does not go unmanned; that’s policy. Tell me, sir... where do you suppose I’m going to find agents to assign to you?”
“I can think of one place you might look,” Lydecker said sweetly, and exited the office like a man fleeing a burning building.
He wasn’t going to get any help on the federal level, that was obvious. His own men wouldn’t be here for another twenty-four hours, due to unsafe weather conditions grounding their aircraft in Wyoming.
Well, if he couldn’t get help from the feds, he’d go farther down the food chain...
Twenty minutes later, he stood across a desk from a police lieutenant.
“Four men for twenty-four hours,” Lydecker said. “That’s all I need.”
The lieutenant — balding, forty, his teeth brown from cigarettes, hazel eyes in droopy pouches from too many years on the job — said, “How about twenty-four men, for four hours? Couldn’t do that, either.”
Lydecker opened his fist to reveal a rubber-banded roll of bills; then he closed his fist again. “You look like a reasonable man — I can’t believe that we can’t reach some sort of compromise.”
The lieutenant was hypnotized by Lydecker’s fist, which periodically opened — as if he were doing a flexing exercise with the roll of money — to provide green glimpses.
“All I need, Lieutenant, are four men, hell, two men, for twenty-four hours... until my own people get here.”
“We’d have to shake on it,” the lieutenant said.
Lydecker extended the hand with the roll of money, shook with the lieutenant, and brought the hand back, empty. He tossed a card on the desk. “My hotel is on the back... one hour.”
An hour later, in the hotel bar, Lydecker and his cup of coffee sat across a booth from two detectives and their beers; ancient Frank Sinatra ballads were filtering in over a scratchy sound system, and the smoke was stale enough to be left over from Rat Pack days, too.
The older plainclothes dick, in his fifties, looked to still be in pretty good shape, but his face was pallid, his dark eyes sad, his brown hair cut short and graying at the temples; his name was Rush, though he didn’t seem to be in much of one. The younger dick, Davis, was thirty or so, with reddish hair, light complexion, and pale blue eyes.
“So,” Rush said, “the lieutenant said you needed help.”
“Yeah. Looking for somebody wanted in a federal matter.”
“We don’t usually back up ‘federal matters,’ Colonel. What’s wrong with the FBI?”
“I heard in this town, you want something done, you go to the PD — was I told wrong?”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Rush said. “Your perp got a name?”
“Sort of.” Lydecker looked from Rush to Davis and back again. “Eyes Only.”
The detectives exchanged wary glances.
“I need to find him.”
Rush snorted. “Good luck. Give him our best.”
“There’s got to be a way. Look at how you people lock down sectors, those hoverdrones everywhere—”
“Colonel.” Davis spoke for the first time. “We’ve been seekin’ Eyes Only for years now... and we don’t know one thing more than the day we started. He’s careful, he’s smart, apparently funded up the wazoo... and anybody who has had any dealings with him is absolutely loyal to him.”