"You won't need them." Alasdair was already slowing, his turn signal flashing. "Okay, go." The car park outside a 7-Eleven was deserted.
Riordan popped the door, lowered the briefcase, and then kicked it away from the truck. "Go yourself," he said. He was already opening another mobile phone, this one reassuringly unmodified. "Duty chief? This is the major. I have some orders for you. The day codes are-"
Miriam rubbed her temples. "Anyone got a cell phone?" she asked.
"I have," said Olga. "Why?"
"Unless you can't live without it, I want to call Mike."
"But we can-"
"I said I want to call Mike!" Miriam snarled. "When I've spoken to him you can put me back in my padded box to gestate while you get down to finding those fucking bombs and arresting or shooting whoever stole them, but I should be the one who talks to Mike."
"Why-“
"Because I'm the only one of us he's got any reason to trust," she said bleakly, "and I'm afraid I'm going to burn him."
The clinic room could have been a bedroom in a chain hotel, if not for the row of sockets on the wall behind the bed-piping in oxygen, vacuum, and other, less common utilities-and for the cardiac monitor on a stand beside it, spreading leads like creepers to each of the occupant's withered branchlike limbs. Outside the sealed window unit, the late afternoon sunshine parched the manicured strip of grass that bordered this side of the clinic; beyond it, a thin rind of trees dappled the discreet brick wall with green shadows.
The man in the bed dozed lightly. He'd been awake earlier in the day, shaking in frustration as the speech therapist tried to coax words out of his larynx, and the effort-followed by an hour with the physiotherapist, working on the muscles in his damaged left arm, and then a light lunch served by a care assistant who carefully spooned each mouthful into his mouth-had tired him out. He'd been in his late sixties even before the stroke, his stamina reduced and his aches more noticeable with every morning. Since the stroke, things had only gotten worse. Afternoon naps, which he'd once disdained as suitable only for kindergartners, had become a regular daily fixture for him.
Something-a small movement, or an out-of-place noise-brought him to consciousness, though he could not say why. Perhaps the shadow of a bird fluttering before the window glass disturbed him, or footsteps in the corridor outside: In any case, his eyelids flickered open, staring at the ceiling overhead. "Urrr." He closed his mouth, which had fallen open as he slept, and reached for the bed's motor controller with his left hand. His eyes twitched from side to side, scanning the angles and planes of the space surrounding him, looking for intrusions. His thumb twitched, pushing the headboard motor control, and the bed began to whine, raising him towards a sitting position.
"Good afternoon, old man." The visitor closed the clinic room door carefully, then approached the bed, standing where its occupant could see him.
"Urr… doc." Surprise and doubt sparked in the old man's eyes. "Doc-tor!"
"I wanted to take a last look at you. You know, before the end."
"You. End?" The visitor had to lean close to make out the words, for Angbard's speech was garbled, the muscles of his lips and tongue cut loose by the death of nerves in his brain. "Wher' guards?"
"They were called away." The visitor seemed amused. "Something to do with an emergency, I gather. Do you remember Plan Blue?"
"Wha-"
The visitor watched as Angbard fumbled with the bed's controller. "No, I don't think so," he said, after a moment. Reaching out, he pulled the handset away from the duke's weakened fingers. "Your aunt sends her regards, and to tell you that our long-standing arrangement is canceled," he said, and stood up. "That may be sufficient for her, but some of us have been waiting in line, and now it's my turn."
"Scheisse!"
The duke made a grab for the emergency cord, but it was futile; he was still deathly weak and uncontrolled on his left side, and his right hand clawed inches short of the pull. Then the visitor grabbed the pillow from behind his head and rammed it down onto his face. It was a very uneven struggle, but even so the old man didn't go easily. "Fucking lie down and die," snarled the visitor, leaning on him as he tried to grab the duke's flailing left hand. "Why can't you do something right for once in your life?"
He was answered by a buzzer sounding from the heart monitor.
Breathing heavily he levered himself off the bed; then, lifting the pillow, he shoved it under the duke's lolling head before turning to stare at the monitor. "Hmm, you do appear to have lost your sinus rhythm altogether! Time to leave, I think." He stared at the corpse in distaste. "That's a better end than you deserved, old man. Better by far, compared to the normal punishment for betrayal…"
He breathed deeply a few times, watching the buzzing heart monitor. Then Dr. ven Hjalmar opened the door, took a deep breath to fill his lungs, and shouted, "Crash cart, stat! Patient in cardiac arrest!" before turning hack to the bed to commence the motions of resuscitation.
Mike had been accumulating leave for too long; taking some of it now wouldn't strike anyone in human resources as strange, although it was a fair bet that someone higher up the tree would start asking questions if he didn't show up for work within a week.
In the meantime he went home, still numb with shock from the disclosures buried on the cassette tapes. It was, he thought, time to make some hard choices: Collusion between officials and the bad guys was nothing particularly new, but for it to go so high up the ladder was unprecedented. And it would be extraordinarily dangerous for someone at his level to do anything about it. Or not-and that was even worse. Dr. James is in WARBUCKS's pocket, Mike reminded himself. And he gave me those tapes, not some other, more qualified analyst. If I'm lucky he did it because he considers me trustworthy. More likely… A vision kept flickering in his mind's eye, of Colonel Smith, in all candor, telling Dr. James, "Mike's a bit squirrelly about you. Nothing to worry about, but you should keep an eye on him." And Dr. James, with that chilly reserved look in his eye, nodding and making a note by his name on the org chart: disposable resource.
Mike was under no illusions about the taskmaster Dr. James worked for: a determined, driven, man-ruthless would not be an exaggeration. He had a fire in his belly and a desire to bend history to his will. With his doctrine of a unitary executive and his gradual arrogation of extraordinary powers granted by a weak presidency, he'd turned the office of vice president into the most powerful post in the government. And he had good reason to silence anyone who knew of his covert connection to the Clan: good reason, even, to silence the Clan themselves for good. He's an oilman, and he knows they're sitting on all the oil thatwas ever under Texas, untapped, Mike realized. And now he's got a machine for getting there. It's crude today, but who knows what it'll he like tomorrow? He's got to be thinking, who needs Iraq, anyway? Or Saudi Arabia?
Mike wasn't naive: He knew that the most addictive drug, the deadliest one, the one that fucked people up beyond redemption every time, was money. And I'm between an addict and the most powerful fix in history…
That afternoon and evening, he meticulously searched his apartment, starting by unplugging all the electrical appliances and checking sockets and power supplies for signs of tampering. Then he began to search the walls and floors, inch by inch, looking for bugs. And while he searched, he thought.
The picture looked grimmer the longer he looked at it. Thinking back, there'd been the horror-flick prop they'd found in a lockup in Cambridge, thick layers of dust covering the Strangelovian intrusion of a 1950s-era hydrogen bomb, propped up on two-by-fours and bricks with a broken timer plugged into its tail. Nobody ever said what it had been about, but the NIRT inspectors had tagged its date: early 1970s, Nixon administration. What kind of false-flag operation involves nuking one of your own cities? How about one designed to psyche your country up for a nuclear war with China? Except it hadn't happened. But the Clan have a track record of stealing nukes from our inventory. Mike shuddered. And WARBUCKS had backed BOY WONDER's plan to invade Iraq, even after Chemical Ali had offed his cousin Saddam and sued for peace on any terms. And according to some folks who Mike wasn't yet prepared to write off as swivel-eyed loons, the oil had something to do with it.