The next morning, he shoehorned himself into his car and drove carefully to a nearby strip mall, which had seen better days, and where, if he remembered correctly, there might still be some beaten-up pay phones tucked away in a corner. His memory turned out to be correct. Staking out a booth and using his mobile as an address book, he dialed a certain exdirectory number. Seven minutes, he told himself. Ten, max.
“Hello?” It wasn’t Colonel Smith, but the voice was familiar.
“Janice? It’s Mike Fleming here. Can I please have a word with the colonel?”
There was a pause. “Mike? You’re on an unsecured line, you know that?”
“I have a problem with my home phone. Can you put me through?”
A longer pause. “I—see. Please hold.” The hold music cut off after half a minute. “Okay, I’m transferring you now.”
“Mike?” It was Colonel Smith. He tensed. Until now, he hadn’t been entirely sure it was going to work, but now he was committed, upcoming security vetting or no. I could be throwing my career away, he thought, feeling mildly nauseous.
“Hi, boss.”
“Mike, you’re still signed off sick. What’s up?” Smith sounded concerned.
“Oh, nothing much. I was wondering, though, if you’d be free to do lunch sometime?”
“If I’d be—” There was a muffled sound, as of a hand covering a mic. “Lunch? Oh, right. Look, I’m tied up right now, but how about we brown bag it some time soon?”
Mike nodded to himself. Message received: The last time the colonel had dropped round with a brown bag there’d been a bomb and a gun in it. “Sure. It’s not urgent, I don’t want to drag you out of the office—how about next Wednesday?” It was one of the older field-expedient codes: ignore negatives, treat them as emphasis. Mike just hoped the colonel had been to the same school.
“Maybe sooner,” Smith reassured him. “I’ll see you around.”
When he hung up, Mike almost collapsed on the spot. He’d been on the phone for two minutes. His arms were aching and he could feel the sweat in the small of his back. Shit. He pulled out the antibacterial gel wipes and applied them vigorously to the mouthpiece of the phone—he’d held the receiver and dialed the numbers with a gloved hand, but there were bound to be residues, DNA sequences, whatever—then mentally crossed it off his list of untapped numbers, for good. That left the polygraph, but, he figured, raising chain-of-command concerns with one’s immediate superior isn’t normally a sacking offense. And Dr. James hadn’t told him not to, either.
He’d hoped the colonel would deduce the urgency in his invitation and he was right. Barely half an hour after he arrived home the doorbell rang. Too soon, way too soon! his nerves gibbered at him as he hobbled towards the entryphone, but the small monitor showed him a single figure on the front step. “Come on up,” he said, eyeballing the top of his boss’s head with trepidation. A moment later, he opened the door.
“This had better be good,” said Smith, standing on the front step with a bag that contained—if Mike was any kind of judge—something from Burger King.
Mike hung back. “To your knowledge, is this apartment bugged?”
“Is—” Smith raised an eyebrow, an expression of deep concern on his face: concern for Mike’s sanity, in all probability. “If I thought it was bugged, I wouldn’t be here. What’s up?”
“Maybe nothing. To your knowledge, was there anything hinky about the mobile phone you dropped off with me last time you visited.”
“Was there”—Mike had never really seen a man’s pupils dilate like that, up close—“what?” He could see irritation and curiosity fighting out in Smith’s face.
“Let me get my coat. You’re driving.”
“You bet.” Smith shook his head. “This had better be good.”
The colonel drove a Town Car—anonymous, not obviously government issue. He didn’t say a word until they were a mile down the road. “This car is not bugged. I swept it myself. Talk.”
Mike swallowed. “You’re my boss. In my chain of command. I’m talking to you because I’m not from the other side of the fence—Is it normal for someone higher up the chain of command to do a false-flag pickup and brief a subordinate against their line officer?”
Smith didn’t say anything, but Mike noticed his knuckles whiten against the leather steering wheel.
“Because if so,” Mike continued, “I’d really like to know, so I can claim my pension and get the hell out.”
Smith whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “You’re telling me someone’s been messing with you—Dr. James. Right?”
“That’s the one.”
“Shit!” Smith thumped the center of the steering wheel so hard Mike twitched. “Sorry. I thought I’d cured him of that.” He flicked a turn signal on, then peeled over onto an exit ramp. “What did he want you to do?”
“It’s what I’ve already done, as much as anything else—the mobile phone you gave me, to pass on to the other side? Did you know it had a bomb in the earpiece? At least, that’s what Dr. James told me. He also told me he was reassigning me to some kind of expeditionary force. Do you know anything about that?”
“You sure about the phone?” Smith sounded troubled.
“That’s what he said. It gets worse. When I handed the thing over, my contact actually came out and asked me to my face whether there was a bomb in it. I said no, of course, but it sounds like they’re about as paranoid as the doctor. If they check it and find there is a bomb in it . . .”
“That’s a matter for the policy folks to deliberate on,” Smith said as he changed lanes. “Mike, I know what you’re asking and why, and I’ve got to say, that’s not your question—or mine—to ask. Incidentally, you don’t need to worry about any fallout; we’ve got a signed executive order waiting to cover our asses. But let me spin you a scenario? Put yourself in the doctor’s shoes. He knew they had a stolen FADM and he wanted it back, and he had to send them a message that he meant business. You were talking to their, their liberals. But we don’t want to talk to their liberals. Liberals are predisposed to talk; the doctor wants to get the attention of their hard-liners, get them to fold. We’d already told them that we wanted the weapon back. Negotiation beyond that point was useless: They could hand it over and we’d think about talking, but if not, no deal. So . . . if you look at it from his angle, a phone bomb would underline the message that we were pissed and we wanted our toy back. To the doctor’s way of thinking, if they found it, no big deaclass="underline" It underlines the message. If it worked, waxing one weak sister would send a message to their other faction that we mean business. At least, that’s how he works.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel air bag cover.
“With respect, sir, that’s crazy. The Clan doesn’t work that way; what might work with a criminal enterprise or a dictatorship is the wrong way to go about nudging a hereditary aristocracy. He’s talking about assassinating someone’s mother or brother. They’ll see it as cause for a blood feud!”
“Hmm. That’s another way of looking at things. Only it’s already out of date. Mike, you swore an oath. Can I rely on you to keep this to yourself?”
Fleming nodded, uncertain. “I guess so.” Part of him wanted to interrupt: But you’re wrong! He’d spent two stinking days running a fever in a horse-drawn carriage with Miriam’s mother and the Russian ice princess with the sniper’s rifle, and every instinct screamed that the colonel’s scenario setup was glaringly wrong—that to those folks, the political was personal, very personal indeed, and a phone bomb in the wrong ear wouldn’t be treated as a message but as grounds for a bloody feud played out by the assassination of public figures—but at the same time, the colonel obviously had something else on his mind. And he had a sick, sinking feeling that trying to bring conflicting facts to the colonel’s attention, much less Dr. James’s, would lead to dismissal of his concerns at best. At worst—don’t go there, he told himself.