“What’s the objective?” Max asked. His voice had gotten quieter but more distinct.
“They didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know.”
“You know more,” he persisted. “I know you do-and so do you.” She continued with her blank silence for about ten seconds, like she didn’t hear him.
“You live in Pietr’s world,” Renn said, “and Avery’s. You like being in between-you like the danger. You think they don’t know about each other. I assure you they do. They’re both comfortable using you to watch the other. They both trust you to keep the confidences they actually want you to keep. Frankly, they both take you for granted. Their trust in you is justified by the fact that you’ve never used your position to play one against the other.” He looked at her searchingly, which seemed kind of comical, what with the dazed look on her face. “You could, you know,” he said and she nodded like a marionette.
“I could,” she mumbled, half a second behind him. “I know.”
“You know more. You know something you’re not supposed to know, that you didn’t even intend to find out.” As he said this, his voice deepened again, taking on that echo chamber sound. “Share that with me.”
Samantha sat up and motioned as though writing on a pad. Tauber grabbed a pen and paper immediately off the table and put them in Sam’s hands-and she started writing strange. She started writing upside down, is how it turned out. When I looked up at her, her eyes were closed. And some of the letter forms were a bit garbled. But there she sat, writing it.
“She saw him write it,” Max whispered, “across the desk.” He waited until he was sure she was finished and then took the paper from her. Turning it around, we all read: Sun 1230 IAD-CIA
“ ’Sun’ — It’s Sunday?” Tauber said. “Day after tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” she nodded her head.
“You’re working with CIA?” Max asked.
Sam shook her head. “That’s what he wrote but it doesn’t make sense. Jim always says we can’t work with the agencies because that would put us on the radar, up for investigations. I don’t know who the client is.” She thought about it for a moment. “Actually, I don’t even know if there is a client. The other night, Pietr said-he’s a man, you all boast in bed-he said, ‘When this is done, we’ll be in the driver’s seat. They’ll dance to our tune.’
“Who will?” Max asked. “ Who’ll dance to our tune?”
“That’s all he said.” Max and Tauber exchanged looks, perplexed and concerned. But they looked like they were going to stop there. I leaned forward.
“What did he mean?” I asked.
“He didn’t tell her,” Max hissed in my ear. “She has no facts.”
“You said everybody mindreads,” I told him. “She’s been sleeping with him.” I turned back to Sam. “What’s your intuition tell you? What did he mean? Who’ll dance to our tune?”
She stared blankly for just a moment and then, something inside her seemed to gather itself. She cleared her throat and said, “Everybody.”
“What’s that mean?” Max asked.
“ Everybody,” she repeated, but now like she knew, certainty without proof but certainty nonetheless. “Governments, Business-Everybody.”
And then it was quiet, for what felt like a long time. We waited to make sure she had nothing more to say-and to let it all sink in.
“Okay,” Max said in his echoey voice, “you fell asleep while preparing to go out. You were stressed from the events of the day. Do you understand?”
“Of course. I’ll tell him you were here,” she said cheerily.
Max smiled. “Of course you will,” he replied respectfully. “But I didn’t get anything out of you because I couldn’t get the password.”
“You couldn’t get the password,” she repeated half a second behind and you could see her relief at the thought, as his suggestion faded her actual mistake away, out of memory, out of existence. “You didn’t get it…” she murmured, fading away.
“I didn’t get it,” Max repeated softly. “Tell Pietr you did well. You have every reason to feel good about yourself,” he ended, touching her forehead and she slouched back onto the couch, snoring like a buzzsaw. He led us out the door, down the elevator and back outside.
“What now?” I asked, pulling the car out of the parking lot. “It’s Friday night. If they’ve got a big deal Sunday-”
“What are they doing with CIA?” he demanded, handing the piece of paper with Sam’s writing to Tauber in the back seat. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“Maybe if we knew who IAD is…” Tauber muttered.
“It’s the rat squad,” I said and felt all eyes on me at once. “It’s on all the cop shows-Internal Affairs, the cops that watch the cops.”
“That’s what I was supposed to do for Alan Hammond,” Max said, seeming to find the memory impossibly strange now.
“So does CIA have a rat squad?” Tauber asked. “Is L Corp watchin’ CIA?”
“How would that make everyone dance to their tune?” I asked.
“Maybe they’ve got some secret-maybe they’re blackmailin’ CIA.”
“Do they really want to cross the Government like that?”
“It would explain why they’re meetin’ on a Sunday,” Tauber held onto his point. “Keep it off the record.”
“They’ve already built themselves a position where the government can’t hurt them,” Max shook his head. “Why open Pandora’s box? Blackmail doesn’t make sense.”
“And it’s not what she said,” I added, as surprised as anyone to hear myself speaking up. “She said there was an operation, that Volkov had a group of six in training and it’s Sunday. Blackmail isn’t an operation.”
“-ya don’t need six black ops to handle it,” Tauber added. “Maybe they’re gonna steal something from CIA and blackmail ‘em with it. Maybe that’s what they’re doin’ Sunday.”
“But what’s that got to do with Dave?” I asked. “Why kill Dave?”
Silence. Several beats of silence.
“It seems,” Max said, “that the only thing we know for sure is who CIA is.” He shrugged. “We’ve got to go someplace and dope this out.”
“Someplace we can think,” Tauber added, “and this ain’t it-it’s a probe a minute around here. Where do we go?” Tauber asked and Max looked blank for a moment.
“Ruben Crowell,” I said. “Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.”
“Ruben?” Tauber exclaimed. His face got all screwed up.
“You know him?” Max asked. “Good guy?”
“One o’ the best, back in the day,” Tauber said. “Smart guy, kind of a rebel-part o’ Dave’s klatch. Now? Who knows? None of us are what we were. How about Marjorie, his wife? They were both in the program.”
“Don’t know her,” I answered. “I just have Ruben’s name.”
“What about him?” Max asked again. “How would he fit into all this?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Tauber said. “I can imagine Ruben havin’ nothing to do with any of us. I can imagine him makin’ pizzas or analyzin’ nut cases for a living. I can’t imagine him workin’ for Jim Avery.”
I could see a highway overpass ahead, the truck lights running off in both directions. Max shrugged. “Okay then,” he said, “North, Pancho.”
Eleven
We crept up on Gettysburg like Lee’s Army, coming out of the South up what is now called Confederate Avenue. The sun rose through haze on the hill by the university, dense lines of trees setting off the old town below, the long straight streets marching into the distance, columns of upright woodframe and brick houses bearing the bulletholes of the battle that made America. We’d been driving all night-East, West, Southwest, Northeast-we were on our third car since Virginia.
“Wow!” Tauber breathed out as soon as he got out of the car.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t feel any old-time mindbenders,” he said, “but there’s sure a whole lot o’ them — L Corp-lotsa fuzzy, dim signals.” He moved around a bit, as though the signal might improve facing a slightly different direction. “But nobody like us. Nobody like Ruben.”