“I don’t know who the fuck it is,” he said. “But he’s asking for you. For Adam Fisk.”
I took the handset and clicked the send button and said, “This is Adam Fisk.”
A male voice said, “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble there, Adam. Don’t you think we should talk this over first?”
“Who is this?”
“One of the folks playing host to your stepbrother. We’ve been listening to your radio chatter for the last few hours. And we think you’re all needlessly upset. You’re a negotiator, I understand. A kind of diplomat. Well, maybe some negotiation is in order today.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Just that you might want to come knock on our door before you break it down. You’re a little ways south on Spindevil, right? So come up the road and stop by for a chat. Just you.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“To avoid unnecessary violence. Maybe get your stepbrother out of here in one piece, if we come to an agreement. You have our guarantee of safe passage, in and out. But this isn’t an unlimited offer. I figure you’re, what, five minutes from here by car? Plus a little time to sort this all out with your Tau buddies. So we’ll expect you in fifteen minutes, or not at all.”
I said, “Why should I believe you?”
But there was no answer.
Trevor was against it.
It was Trevor who drove me up Spindevil to the Het house, with Jolinda in the backseat to make sure we reached the right property. We took the Toyota: the disposable vehicle. He said, “You’ll be giving them another hostage—you know that, right?”
We had talked this through once already, though not to Trevor’s satisfaction. “They don’t need another hostage. That’s not what this is about.”
The Toyota’s rattletrap suspension was no match for the potholes on Spindevil. Trev kept his eyes on the road, though he spared the occasional sidelong glance in my direction. The rain had stopped, suddenly and finally, but a chilly wind bowed the roadside oaks and beeches. The clouds had thinned to show a disk of sunlight the color of milk.
I repeated what I had already said to him. Since the Hets were aware of our presence, they could put Geddy in a vehicle and leave the farmhouse, and once they were in motion there was little we could do to stop them. Any kind of direct intervention would endanger Geddy and risk the kind of law-enforcement attention we couldn’t afford. But as long as I was in the farmhouse talking, they would stay put until we were ready to intervene. And if everything went according to plan, it wouldn’t matter whether I was inside or out.
“That’s a huge fuckin’ if,” Trevor said. “We’re talking about the people who put four Taus in the hospital. They’ll do whatever they think they can get away with.”
“Just up around the bend ahead,” Jolinda said. “You’ll see the house once we pass that stand of oaks.”
“They’re Hets,” I said. “They won’t do anything violent unless they’ve cleared it with their bosses.”
“That might be true of most Hets,” Trevor said. “On a statistical basis. But you’ll be dealing with, like, one guy. Maybe somebody on the far end of the Het curve. Somebody willing to take action on his own hook.”
“There!” Jolinda exclaimed. “See it?”
Trev slowed down as the farmhouse came into view. From this distance it looked like any of a half dozen other properties we had passed. A two-story wood-frame house maybe fifty or sixty years old, painted a bilious, weathered green. Gaps on top where shingles had fallen from the roof. Sagging front porch. Wild oaks on the south side of it; on the north, a few acres of patchy scrub that someone might have tried to farm, once, long ago, in a fit of unjustified optimism. Surrounding all this, a chain-link fence on which signs had been posted:
NO TRESPASSING OR LOITERING
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
“It’s also possible I can talk Geddy out of there. Maybe they reconsidered the whole thing. Maybe they got a call when the telecom was up, telling them things had changed, they don’t need him anymore.”
“Like the way you talked to Amanda,” Trevor said.
“Right.”
The car came to a stop at the end of the laneway that led to the farmhouse, tires crunching on gravel. I took a long look down the laneway to the house, five dark windows facing us: two on the ground floor, two above, and a tiny dormer window in what must have been the attic. Probably a Het guy in each one, watching. Trev said, “There are three vehicles parked in back of it, four Het SUVs and the car Geddy was driving when they took him. We figure at least eight potential hostiles inside. You might not see all of them, so don’t make assumptions. You have the radio?”
One of Shannon’s walkie-talkies, strapped to my belt. We had arranged this before we got in the car. Fifteen minutes after I gained admission to the farmhouse, Trevor would make contact by radio. I would say certain words, or I would not; and as a result certain things would happen, or they wouldn’t.
“Best get on down there if you’re going,” Jolinda said from the backseat.
I opened the door and got out and closed the door behind me. I felt the wind on my face, moist from the morning’s rain. I heard the branches of the oaks groaning in the wind, the spastic idle of the car’s engine. My legs felt too heavy to move but I moved them anyway. I began to walk down the graveled drive to the sagging farmhouse porch, thinking about the people watching me from the lightless mirrors of the windows, wondering which of those rooms Geddy was in.
The porch was in even worse shape than it had looked from the road. The plank steps bowed under my feet, elastic with rot. A naked lightbulb above the door was half filled with rainwater and rust. The door itself was subtly askew on its hinges, and it opened as I raised my fist to knock. A man stood in the shadows behind it. “Come on in, Mr. Fisk,” he said.
I recognized the voice: it was the man I had spoken to over the radio.
And as I stepped inside, I recognized the face.
Chapter 23
At least I thought I recognized him. The face was familiar, but I couldn’t connect it with a name or a concrete memory. He was a tall man, white, probably in his forties, with a gym-rat body, bald head, and angular cheekbones that made him look faintly Slavic. He wore jeans and a black sweatshirt, plain but clean. His lips were compressed in a smile that verged on a sneer. He stood back and waved me in.
Where had I seen his face before?
Inside the farmhouse was a large square room, stairs leading to the second story, an arch opening into what appeared to be a kitchen. The floor was wood, floorboards scuffed and muddied to a smoky black. The walls were covered in scabbed green utility paint. The furniture consisted of a worn sofa, six plastic kitchen chairs, and a woodstove ticking away in one corner of the room.
Assuming the tall guy was the boss, three of his subordinates were also present in the room: one next to the window, one blocking the way to the kitchen, and a third (a woman) perched on the stairs. They all carried holstered handguns, and they looked at me with expressions ranging from contempt to indifference.
“Sit down, Adam,” the tall guy said. “Might as well make yourself comfortable while we discuss things.”
“There’s nothing to discuss until I know Geddy is safe.”