"I think I can do that, sir." Philips nodded. "Difficult cases . . . ?"
"Use your discretion."
Here, have some rope; try not to
hang yourself with it.
"I'll be back as soon as I can. Meanwhile, when's the next supply run back to Lynchburg departing?"
"If it's Boston you want, there's an aerodrome near Raleigh that's loyal," Philips offered. "I'll wire them to put a scout at your disposal?"
"Do that." Burgeson winced. Flying tended to make him airsick, even in the modern fully-enclosed mail planes that had been coming in recently. "I need to be there as soon as possible."
"Absolutely, citizen. I'll put the wheels in motion at once." And, true to his word, almost as soon as Philips disappeared there came an almighty squeal of brakes from beneath the train.
The past week had been one long nightmare for Paulette Milan.
She'd been a fascinated observer of Miriam's adventures, in the wake of the horrible morning a year ago when they'd both lost their jobs; and later, when Miriam had sucked her into running an office for her—funneling resources to an extradimensional business start-up—she'd been able to square it with her conscience because she agreed with Miriam's goals. If the Clan, Miriam's criminal extended family, could be diverted into some other line of business, that was cool. And if some of their money stuck to Paulie's fingertips in the form of wages, well, as long as the wages weren't coming in for anything illegal on her part, that was fine, too.
But things hadn't worked out. First Miriam had vanished for nearly six months—a virtual prisoner, held under house arrest for much of that time. The money pipeline had slammed shut, leaving Paulie looking for a job in the middle of a recession. Then things got worse. About six weeks ago Miriam's friends—or co-conspirators, or cousins, or whatever—Olga and Brill had turned up on her doorstep and made her the kind of offer you weren't allowed to refuse if you knew what was good for you. There was a fat line of credit to sweeten the pill, but it left Paulie looking over her shoulder nervously. You didn't hand out that kind of money just to open an office, in her experience. And there had been dark hints about internal politics within the Clan, a civil war, and the feds nosing around.
All of this was
bad.
Capital-B bad. Paulie had grown up in a neighborhood where the hard men flashed too much cash around, sometimes checked into club fed for a few years at a time, and snitches tended to have accidents . . . she'd thought she had a good idea what was coming until she'd turned on the TV a few days ago and seen the rising mushroom clouds. Heard the new president's broadcast, glacial blue eyes twinkling as he came out with words that were still reverberating through the talk shows and news columns ("PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: PRESIDENT 'NOT INSANE,'" as the
Globe
had put it).
It made her sick to her stomach. She'd spent the first two days in bed, crying and throwing up on trips to the bathroom, certain that the FBI were going to break down her door at any moment. The stakes she'd signed up for were far higher than she'd ever imagined, and she found she hated herself for it: hated her earlier moment of pecuniary weakness, her passive compliance in following Miriam down her path of good intentions, her willingness to make friends and let people influence her. She'd caught herself looking in the bathroom cabinet at one point, and hastily shut it: The temptation to take a sleeping pill, or two, or enough to shut it out forever, was a whispering demon on her shoulder for a few hours. "What the fuck can I
do?"
She'd asked the bourbon bottle on the kitchen table. "What the
fuck
can I do?"
Today . . . hadn't been better, exactly; but she'd awakened in a mildly depressive haze, rather than a blind panic, knowing that she had two options. She could go to the feds, spill her guts, and hope a jail cell for the rest of her life was better than whatever the Clan did to their snitches. Or she could keep calm and carry on—she'd seen a foreign wartime poster with that line, once—carry on doing what Miriam had asked of her: sit in an office, buy books and put them in boxes, buy
stuff
(surveying tools, precision atomic clocks, laboratory balances: What did she know?) and stash it in a self-storage locker ready for a courier collection that might never arrive.
Get up. Drink a mug of coffee, no food. Go to the office. Order supplies. Repackage them with an inventory sheet, to meet the following size and weight requirements. Drive them to the lockup. Consider eating lunch and feel revulsion at the idea so do some more work, then go home. Keep calm and carry on (it beats going to Gitmo). Try not to think . . .
Paulette drove home from the rented office suite in a haze of distraction, inattentive and absentminded. The level of boxes in the lockup had begun to go down again, she'd noticed: For the first time in a week there'd been a new manilla envelope with a handwritten shopping list inside. (She'd stuffed it in her handbag, purposely not reading it.) So someone was collecting the consignments. Her fingers were white on the steering wheel as she pulled up in the nearest parking space, half a block from her front door. She was running short on supplies, but the idea of going grocery shopping made her feel sick: Anything out of the routine scared her right now.
She unlocked the front door and went inside, switched the front hall light on, and dumped her handbag beside the answering machine. It was a warm enough summer's day that she hadn't bothered with a jacket. She walked through into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, purposely not thinking about how she was going to fill the evening—a phone call to Mother, perhaps, and a movie on DVD—and that was when the strange man stepped out behind her and held up a badge.
"Paulette Milan, I'm from the DEA and I'd—"
She was lying down, and dizzy. He was staring at her. Everything was gray. His mouth was moving, and so was the world. It was confusing for a moment, but then her head began to clear:
I fainted?
She was looking up at the living room ceiling, she realized. There was something soft under the back of her head.
"Can you hear me?" He looked concerned.
"I'm." She took a couple of breaths. "I'm. Oh God."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you like that—are you all right? Listen, do you have a heart condition—"
No. No.
She must have shaken her head. "Do you know Miriam Beckstein?"
Paulie swallowed. "Shit."
Everything, for an instant, was crystal clear.
I'm from the DEA. Do you know Miriam Beckstein?
The next logical words had to be,
You're under arrest.
"I need to talk to her; her life's in danger."
Paulie blinked.
Does not compute.
"You're from the DEA," she said hesitantly. Pushed against the carpet. "I fainted?"
"Uh, yes, in the kitchen. I never—I carried you in here. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I wanted to talk, but I was afraid they might be watching."
Watching?
"Who?" she asked.
"The FTO," he said. Who? she wondered. "Or the Clan."
The brittle crystal shell around her world shattered. "Oh, them," she said carelessly, her tongue loosened by shock. "They ring the front doorbell. Like everyone else." Bit by bit, awareness was starting to return. Chagrin—I