Adrianna came around, grabbed his upper arm. ‘Come along. No time for games, Brian.’
Despite it all, he enjoyed her touch. ‘You got it, Adrianna. No time for games.’
They exited the terminal, got into a cab, and the cabbie snorted when he heard the address from Adrianna. ‘Man, what a waste of time…’
Brian was sitting in the front, letting Adrianna try to cheer up the doctor. ‘Don’t worry, pal. We’ll give you a big tip, just the same.’
‘You will?’
‘Sure,’ Brian said. ‘Unlimited expense account. For any-thing and everything we want. Even if it’s for a cab drive a couple hundred yards away.’
The cabbie got them out into the steady flow of airport traffic. ‘Must be nice, throwing money around like that. You guys must have one hell of a job.’
Brian said, ‘Pal, you have no idea.’
Alexander Bocks stood alone in his office, looking out the window at the collection of hangars and outbuildings that belonged to him at the Memphis International Airport. Oh, lawyers and bankers and accountants would put up a hell of an argument, saying that these structures did not belong to him, they belonged to AirBox and a bunch of subsidiaries and stockholders and this and that, and Bocks would nod at all the right places and then say, fuck you, they’re mine. They weren’t there before I started, and they are there now, and they belong to me.
He raised a hand, touched the window, felt the vibrations that came from the jet engines and ground equipment and luggage handlers. He pressed his hand tighter against the glass, as if trying to remember well what the sensation was like, what it was like to stand here and feel that thrumming sensation against your skin, that sensation that meant decades’ worth of work and dreams were finally being fulfilled, that he had something he could call his own, something that in a very few hours would—
The door opened. Bocks dropped his hand as if he was a twelve-year-old boy caught in a bathroom by his mom, a copy of her Cosmo magazine in his hands. He turned and Elizabeth stood there, Elizabeth Bouchard, a retired warrant officer from the Air Force, who had taken early retirement to come join him at this crazy venture, to go after the big boys at UPS and FedEx, and who was now a very wealthy woman, stock options and all, but still preferred to come to work every day for the general.
He said, ‘I really wanted some quiet time, Liz.’
‘I know, sir, but you have a visitor.’
Bocks went over to his desk, to the clear piece of square Lucite that stood up six inches and which held his day’s schedule, like the menu of some restaurant or something. He glanced down, then looked up and said, ‘First appointment isn’t for an hour. Who is it?’
‘An Adrianna Scott. With two associates.’
‘Tell her to go away.’
Liz came forward, her fiftyish body still looking uncomfortable in civilian clothes, like she should be wearing BDUs instead of a ridiculous pants suit from Talbots, and she passed over a business card. He looked down, saw the woman’s name and the very familiar emblem and main phone number of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Bocks handed the card back to her. ‘Sorry, I don’t go all weak in the knees anymore when unannounced visitors from Langley turn up. Tell her to make an appointment. Preferably for next week.’
Liz held the card and said, ‘She asked me to say something to you.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Sky Fall, sir,’ she said. ‘She told me to say “Sky Fall”.’
Now there’s irony for you, Bocks thought, for when Liz said those two words something indeed made his knees quiver for a moment. Good goddamn. Well, another day shot. And the possibility was now there for a whole host of nasty days ahead.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Show her and her associates in. And be prepared to cancel everything else for today.’
‘Today?’ Liz replied. ‘Are you sure? I mean, it looks like—’
‘Yes,’ Bocks said, heading back to his desk. ‘Everything. And no phone calls, Liz. And give me a minute before you show them in.’
‘Very good, sir,’ she said, walking out. Bocks sat down in his chair and then let his head rest in his hands, started rubbing at the temples, and closed his eyes real tight. In this position, he thought that the vibrations had returned, but no, it was probably just an illusion, make-believe — which he desperately hoped was what this entire day would become.
Adrianna Scott walked into the general’s office, Victor and Brian right behind her. There was the quick exchange of handshakes, and she said, ‘General, allow me to introduce my two associates. Doctor Victor Palmer, of the Centers for Disease Control, and Detective First Class Brian Doyle, of the New York Police Department.’
The general looked fit and trim, like most military men she had ever known, and as she expected the mention of Brian’s rank brought a quick smile to his face. ‘NYPD? What are you doing here? Going to come after me for some unpaid parking tickets in the Big Apple?’
Brian smiled back at him. ‘It can be arranged. If you’d like.’
‘What’s that? Arranged to be arrested, or arranged to be let loose?’
‘Whichever makes sense,’ Brian said. The general laughed and they sat down and Adrianna was so glad she had worn the longest skirt she owned, for her legs were really trembling with the tension of being this far along. Before leaving on the trip she had taken a dose of acrimophin, a beta blocker that was supposed to ease her racing heart, but she guessed that she should have taken another dose, for her heart rate was roaring right along.
She took a quick glance around the office, saw something that surprised her, and the general picked up on it, right away. ‘Something wrong, Miss Scott?’
Good for you, Adrianna thought. Don’t underestimate this one, don’t even come close to having him think you’re bullshitting him, because it could collapse and end right now, with her on a flight to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and all those years of dreaming and working would be gone in an instant.
‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘it’s just that I find your office…well, different.’
The general eased back a bit in his leather chair. ‘Different how?’
She nodded in the direction of the solitary framed photo, up on the wall. There were bookcases full of books and what looked to be a tiny bar in the other corner, but just the one photo, of a young man with big ears in an Air Force enlisted man’s uniform, looking very young and very serious. Over the many years the chemicals in the photo had faded out, giving the man’s skin a greenish-yellowish tinge, but she could still recognize a young Alexander Bocks.
Adrianna said, ‘Where’s everything else?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The plaques, the photos, the—‘
‘—framed photos, framed certificates, all that framed crap,’ Bocks said back to her. ‘Yeah. The ego wall. Look at me shaking hands with the President. Look at me with the Pope. Look at me, getting pinned when I became a general. The hell with that.’
Bocks swiveled in his chair and said, ‘See that? That’s a skinny kid with big ears who grew up in a small town called Arapahoe, Nebraska, and who knew he didn’t want to farm like his father and grandfather. So he joined the Air Force and worked hard and the Air Force found a place for him, educated him, sent him around the world a few times and made a man out of him. That’s the only thing that’s on my wall. To remind me where I came from, to remind me what I had to do to get here.’
Adrianna stayed silent as Bocks moved his chair back. His gaze was now focused right on her. ‘All right. You didn’t travel here unannounced to admire my empty walls. You need something. You used a coded phrase, telling me who you are and establishing your bona fides. You’ve got my attention, miss. Use it well.’