" So who foots the bill?"
"Not money; information. But if they suggest drugs for your debriefing, my advice is to say no."
Quantrill appreciated Keyhoe's candor and his caution; agreed to meet the man from Pacifica Marine on neutral ground. Two evenings later he was flown in a creaking underpowered Boxmoth with dacron wingskin, no running lights, and almost no radar signature to an abandoned road near Jacksonville, Oregon Territory. He became one of three thousand strangers inundating the little town during a nocturnal outdoor concert at something called the Britt Music Festival. As advertised, he quickly located the two men sharing the big jug of California wine, and covertly studied them until intermission. Keyhoe had been right: in Oregon Territory, nobody else drank California wine in public.
Quantrill followed the older of the two men to an outdoor toilet and murmured the ID phrase through the polymer back wall. He got the right response, half-lost in a snort of merriment. "You sure have a knack for finding my vulnerable moments," said the man. "You'll be the young buck in the baseball cap behind us, I take it."
Quantrill admitted it. If they'd been enemies, they would've already had time to collect him — or to try.
Five minutes later, under the marvelous thud-and-wonder of John Williams overtures, Quantrill again sat in near-darkness just behind the two.
"Call me Brubaker," said the older one, passing the jug back. He indicated the heaveyset younger man at his elbow: "Call him Brubaker too."
Quantrill named himself as 'Conrad', pretended to drink, and complimented the Brubakers for arranging a meeting where Fed surveillance would be hamstrung by white noise and public uncertainties. During the remainder of the program he traded wisps of vital information without mentioning the vacuum-packed device he carried in an armpit pocket of his turtleneck sweater. He did mention that he needed a contact with some group well-versed in electronic countermeasures.
Old Brubaker said there were several ways, all unspecified, to get Conrad in touch with ECM wizards.
Nashville, in the Confederacy, was one option, if Conrad had his paranthrax shots. The other ECM
center was Corpus Christi, near Wild Country; and in Corpus he would be near the rebel nerve center.
Conrad would have to pay his way, of course.
Quantrill wondered aloud how that payment might be made. He expected a long interrogation. Young Brubaker surprised him. Canadian intelligence had collected information on a Chinese device which could apparently synthesize a wide range of substances. That synthesizer — if it had ever existed — was a casualty of the late unlamented war. Yet the giant consortium, IEE, had swallowed up several Chinese scientists and one Frenchman whose specialties might be used to redevelop such a gadget.
Now, IEE was promising Blanton Young an endless, cheap supply of strategic materials from an extraction plant near Eureka. At this point old Brubaker chimed in: "But that's a blind. IEE is outfitting an anchored barge from the air with a delta dirigible, and we've traced its route from a lab 'way the hell and gone out in the central Utah desert. That barge is doing something, all right — but it isn't sucking up enough sea water to yield a hatful of chromium, cobalt, platinum — the stuff that's starting to trickle off that barge.
"There's isn't a commonwealth or a kingdom on Earth that wants to see Young grow independent of foreign trade; Canada sells a lot of platinum here, so you can see why we — uh, they — get nervous when pure platinum starts pouring off that barge. So where's it really coming from? We think it's from that lab — which is the private property of IEE's chief, Boren Mills."
"There's no sea water in the middle of Utah," young Brubaker muttered, "so our guess is that the enterprising Mr. Mills has a synthesizer operating there. We can't find out much about the layout, beyond the fact that it's underground. But it should be possible to get a man stowed away on the IEE supply delta — which, by the way, is filled with hydrogen and has only a two-man crew. Mills is buying tunneling equipment for the lab from overseas. We just might be able to switch some crates of machinery in the Port of Eureka for a few crates full of greeting cards.
"Our man could be put down at that lab inside one of our crates. It'd be nice to pick a team but we're afraid time is short, and we'd be willing to go with one man. If he were a one-man team, that is."
Quantrill felt a distinct tingle at the base of his skull; the signal that his muscles could tap a great surge of noradrenaline on command. "And you're asking me to raid the place for some kind of machine?"
"It's probably the size of a barge, so we're asking you to blow the whole place sky-high," old Brubaker murmured.
The crates, young Brubaker added, would also contain weapons and explosives, all untraceable. "We've established that the lab perimeter is guarded by P-beam towers. Nothing you can't get past with a hovercycle, provided it carries a covey of little Homingbirds. If you get back in one piece, you've got a free ticket to anywhere he can route you." He nodded toward his companion.
Quantrill resisted the urge to run. No professional would outline such a plan to a stranger with such vague credentials as his. Lazily, as though he were not humming with readiness: "For a couple of guys who don't know me from Adam you're telling, and asking, a lot. Hell, I could just boost a 'cycle and head for Nashville on my own with less risk than you're suggesting."
Young Brubaker lay back on the grass, face up, fingers interlaced behind his head in a position that could not have been more vulnerable. He smiled and said, "Don't kid yourself. D'you think Canadian intelligence would send me here without proper briefing? The offer is absolutely valid. We happen to know you're familiar with the innards of a delta. Also with munitions, and the word is that a little extra risk hasn't stopped you yet.
"We don't often get a man and a mission that fit together this well — but as you can see, I'm, ah, bending over backwards to keep from putting you under any pressure. The decision is up to you, Ted Quantrill."
Sandy's journal, 11 Sep'
Lufo accompanied 'Mr. Gold' back as far as my soddy & lingered alone for the night. I do not mourn the shortened days when nights are this rewarding!
We talked for hours, straining to find common ground for small talk. Since I had no news of interest, I told him stories of my childhood. He avoided the past & spoke of the future. Told me that an old companion has fled the life of a slave-assassin & may migrate to these parts soon. No name, but if Lufo is to be believed, the man must be the equal of him. No doubt a hard-faced old lobo, for he has killed easily and often in the service of our enemies. Lufo spoke of him with brevity & perhaps envy. Already I loathe him. Why would good men want to associate with the likes of such a monster? La-de-da: who am I to speak ill of monsters?
CHAPTER 45
What was the point in being a mover and shaker, Eve asked herself as she lazed at a window of her delta stateroom, if a girl couldn't have a few amenities for her troubles? In Eve's case those amenities were more than a few. She alone occupied one of the rearmost rooms near the delta's center of balance, where the gentle maneuvers of the great craft were least disturbing. The engine pods were so far away, so muted, that only a whisper reached her. And she'd had caterpillar treads affixed to her motorized chaise so that she would not find it necessary to waddle back and forth on the long voyage from Salt Lake City in a gondola that might undulate a bit.
But if her status was high, her spirits remained low. She ignored the ever-changing view as United's behemoth — one of five which offered expensive passenger service — ghosted to the high rolling wind-racked grasslands of Cheyenne, to the awesome abrupt crunch of flat plain against majestic gray-blue peaks near La Junta, to the vertiginous bluffs near Lubbock where plains crumbled into river valleys in their long slope toward the Mexican Gulf hundreds of klicks farther off.