Of course I had already betrayed Tau by lying to Trevor. But I hoped I could be forgiven for that once Geddy was safe. I figured I could make Trevor and Amanda and maybe even Damian understand why I had done what I was doing.
“So,” I said, “what are you proposing? Or do you have to wait for instructions before you can answer that question?”
He smirked. There was a twinkle in his eye: he actually looked merry. “That’s such a tired stereotype—hierarchical Hets, always need a boss to tell them what to do. Some truth in it, of course. When it comes to collective action, yeah, we make sure we’re all on the same page and doing the right thing. Situations like this, field operations? It’s not brain surgery. You send along someone who can assume the authority to issue orders. Pending the end of the blackout, I’m that person. If you think we’re paralyzed until the phones work, you’re not just wrong, you’re stupid.”
I looked at my watch. Twelve minutes had passed.
“So,” he said, “all I want to do here is lay out the terms. We can’t give you Geddy. Not today. You understand that, right? There’s no promise you can make that will secure his release. We need Aaron to vote as intended, and we need to hang on to Geddy until then. What I want to say is, that doesn’t have to be a hardship. The vote’s scheduled for next week, unless the crisis postpones it, and we can make Geddy perfectly comfortable until then. At an undisclosed location, of course, but somewhere comfortable and private.” He turned to give Geddy a puppet-jawed grin. “Think of it as a vacation. Eat, drink, relax, watch videos until this mess gets resolved. Het picks up the tab, and then you go free.”
Geddy continued inspecting the patch of floor between his sneakers.
I said, “And in exchange?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You have people down the road contemplating some kind of rescue attempt. Which, excuse me for saying so, is a truly idiotic idea. Which I imagine you hatched precisely because you’re out of contact with the, uh, Tau consensus, or whatever you call it. We both have so much to lose from a move like that. Somebody gets hurt. Or there’s police involvement, which neither of us wants. Or the conflict escalates out of control. A ridiculous risk.”
“You’re asking us to give up everything we’ve worked for since Klein was killed.”
“What, because of that bill before Congress? I won’t kid you; we want Aaron’s vote. But we’ve got our hands on lots of other levers. And even if this vote goes against us, what the fuck does that buy you?”
Fifteen minutes. The radio on my belt crackled. I said, “I need to check in with my people.”
The Het guy shrugged and said, “Keep it brief.”
* * *
Trev and I had arranged a kind of code. When I answered his call he said, “You’ve been in there a while—everything okay?”
Which meant the initial stage of the rescue plan had been set into motion and was evolving smoothly. Had there been a problem, he would have asked me what was taking so long. If the plan had been cancelled altogether, he would have told me he was getting impatient.
And I said, “We’re still talking.”
Which meant: Come get us ASAP.
Radio silence followed.
* * *
Tom said, “We need to wrap this up. I’m sure you know we have our vehicles behind the house. What’s going to happen is, my people will put Geddy in one of those vehicles and we’ll convoy down Spindevil to the highway. Nobody gets in the way. Nobody follows us. No contact until Aaron casts his vote, at which time we get in touch and tell you where to find Geddy. The video footage stays locked up in the meantime, or, if it does get released, Jenny Fisk tells the press it’s not authentic. That’s a win-win situation.”
“It might be,” I said. “Except we have no reason to believe you. You say you won’t hurt Geddy—”
“As long as Aaron isn’t interfered with, you can count on it.”
“History doesn’t bear out that assertion.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“I was on Pender Island a few years ago when one of your guys shot Amanda Mehta. Maybe you remember that. You’d been trying to squeeze information out of Rachel Ragland, looking to find something you could pin on me or Amanda or Damian Levay. Then you sent some asshole with a rifle to intimidate us. Unfortunately he was also an incompetent asshole.”
The Het guy seemed less surprised than I had hoped, though he sat in silence for a moment. Then he sighed. “That ‘incompetent asshole’ was the father of three kids, did you know that?”
“Then he shouldn’t have come hunting us.”
“Father of three kids. His body was dumped into Georgia Strait from a height, according to the coroner, though he was dead twice over even before he was dropped—a drug overdose and a gunshot wound. You people are thorough, I’ll give you that. As for Rachel Ragland, all we did was ask her some questions. We didn’t hurt her. Harmed not a hair on her head. Hell, Adam, we didn’t even fuck her, unlike you. And unlike you, we keep track of the people we come into contact with.”
“Spy on them, you mean.”
“Whatever you care to call it. And according to our research, Rachel fell on some hard times after you left Vancouver. Moved in with a guy who had a pill and alcohol problem, which he was happy to share with her. Courts eventually took away that kid of hers—”
“Suze,” I said, involuntarily.
“Suze, who I guess was fostered out, but I don’t know, our records aren’t complete on that. The point is, you’re in no position to be claiming the moral high ground. You don’t trust us with Geddy? How about this: I promise not to shoot him, overdose him with narcotics, or push him out of a helicopter. So help me God.”
“At least,” I said, “we didn’t kill Meir Klein.”
He laughed. “It was InterAlia that killed Klein, not Het. But yeah, we knew they were concerned about him going public. InterAlia’s management trusted us with that knowledge, because we shared their concern. Het was thinking about the future long before you idiots started selling Affinity home-test kits, you know. The Affinities need real governance. If not InterAlia, then Het. If not Het, the government will step in and regulate us out of existence. We—”
A bare bulb in a ceiling fixture flickered to life. Everyone in the room paused to stare at it. Moments later there was a chorus of ringtones, including one from the phone in my pocket.
* * *
I ignored my phone, and the Het guy ignored his, but he waved permission at his people: Go ahead, pick up.
A bad situation. But maybe not hopeless. Behind the buzz and tinkle of phones I heard another sound, one I liked a lot better: the wail of a distant siren.
That would be a truck from the Onenia County Fire Department, hurrying up Spindevil Road.
Part of our plan. By now some of the local Taus would have gathered just a few yards down the road, hidden from the farmhouse by the stand of oaks. The disposable Toyota would be there, too, with Trev at the wheel and a canister of gasoline in the passenger seat.
Dangerous as these Het enforcers were, they would have been instructed not to take any action that involved witnesses or would attract the attention of law enforcement. So what we needed was a way to take Geddy out of the farmhouse under civilian observation and without guns drawn. We needed a cat’s paw, and it had been Shannon who suggested the local fire department.
The most dangerous part of this plan was the setup, which required Trev to drive the rattletrap Ford up to the farmhouse and exit the vehicle after spilling and igniting enough gasoline to generate a vigorous blaze. The arrival of the Onenia County fire truck would block the road, leaving the Hets nowhere to go, and Jolinda would tell the firefighters there were squatters living inside the farmhouse. Best-case outcome: firefighters would evacuate the house, including Geddy and me, and civilian scrutiny would prevent any violent interference by frustrated Hets.