3
Loafers on the desktop, phone at his shoulder, Bohlen sat talking to a Bug, telling him in as obnoxious a manner as possible that no, he didn’t have any time to spare for him. He’d been doing this a lot lately, it seemed.
The Bug carried on about interagency cooperation, bureaucratic responsibility, the standard rap. Bohlen let him run down, then said, “No.”
That set the Bug off, and he started talking Formal Complaint. Bohlen keyed in an instruction not to clear calls from the number currently on the line. He waited for it to be processed. Then he hung up.
He sat back, proud of himself. Interagency cooperation my ass. He’d had nothing but trouble from those bastards. That time up in Essex when they hadn’t let him or Delahanty into their office to check on something romping around in their system. They’d had to come back later with an entire armed team, and by then it was too late: whatever it had been was gone.
The Bugs were a jerkdog outfit set up at the start of the war to chase Medrano’s saboteurs. By the time they got organized, the Frontero Liberación Aztlan had been pushed back, the FBI had broken up the subversive networks, and the Internal Security Bureau—InSecBu in Washingtonese, and it hadn’t taken long to derive a good tag from that—had been left without a mission.
The Bugs didn’t let that stop them, devoting their time to kicking in college kids’ doors, confiscating manuscripts from writers, and getting in the way of people with real work to do. There was talk of shutting them down, but they had a lot of protection. Bohlen supposed the whole song and dance would go on until the wrong person got killed.
He turned back to the monitor. He’d been through the Montana report five times this morning and was going for a sixth. Not that he expected to tease out anything new; he was just killing time until Delahanty slouched into his office out on the Coast and he could run the whole thing by him.
He’d been up half the night thinking about it. First at dinner with Maddy and Lu, then sitting up in bed. When Maddy stole all the pillows, he got dressed and went over to Duff’s Alehouse for a couple of beers. hoping they’d calm him down. It didn’t work, and when he returned, Maddy was awake and he had to explain it all to her. She didn’t say much—the Madwoman was a toughie—but in the morning she held him tighter than usual.
The monitor beeped. Letting his feet drop, Bohlen said, “Switch.” The report faded, and a bald man with an oval head and permanently surprised blue eyes appeared. Eddie Frisell, Mushmouth’s right-hand man. Left in charge, Bohlen presumed, on the principle that he was the last person to pull anything behind Cummins’s back.
“Ross?” he said, as if he wasn’t quite sure who it was he was speaking to.
Bohlen smiled. “Hey Eddie. How things shaking?”
“Ross, did you turn down an ISB request just now?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
Eddie’s eyebrows bunched together. “Why’d you do that?”
“Since when are we holding hands with those losers?”
“It was an interbureau request,” Frisell said, shaking his head slightly. “The director approved it . . .”
Uh-huh, Bohlen thought. Jethro had arranged it before he left, and Eddie had forgotten to send it down. “Well, Land o’ Goshen,” he said, forcing his eyebrows up as far as they’d go. “He should of damn well told me. I wouldn’t make these mistakes then.”
An ocean of concern flooded Eddie’s face. “I’ll have him call you back . . .”
“No, don’t bother, I’ll call him. I know where he’s at.”
Eying him doubtfully, Eddie nodded. “All right.”
Bohlen was already reaching for delete, but the temptation to tweak Eddie was just too strong. “Maybe I should check with Harland, make sure it’s okay.”
Eddie almost leaped at him. “No, no, don’t do that, it’s fine, really. I’ll send you a memo . . .”
“Nah, not necessary.” Bohlen paused while Eddie regarded him warily. “Harland’s out in Honolulu, no? What’s he up to, anyway? Running up and down the beach, is he?”
“No. The director’s speaking at the Pacific Rim Security Conference.”
“He’s not speaking all the time. I’ll bet he’s mixing a bit of a vacation in with it. How long’s he gone for, anyway?”
“The beginning of next week.”
“Uh-huh. Well, things are running smooth upstairs, I hope. Need a hand with anything, give me a buzz.” He touched the keyboard, and Eddie jerked closer.
“Now you’re going to call ISB . . .”
“Sure thing,” Bohlen said, and cut him off.
“What’s Eddie up to?” Lu called out.
“Oh, being an idiot,” Bohlen said. He smiled at her sound of disgust. Eddie had spent a lot of time badgering her for a date when she’d worked in Analysis.
A ping sounded as a line appeared onscreen: FLOYD DELAHANTY PRESENT AT SAN FRANCISCO STATION. Bohlen checked the time. Only two hours late. Now that was unheard of: back when they’d been partners, Del had never ceased going on about how things would change when he got an office. “I’m gonna sit on my butt,” he’d said, “and everybody else can hustle. If they want me someplace, they can carry me in a sedan chair.”
Bohlen put the data on hold as he made the call. An empty chair appeared, and he was waiting patiently when the band of white at the bottom of the screen shifted and he realized that it was a broad, business-shirted back.
He leaned forward. “Hey, Del!”
“Holonamini,” a muffled voice said, and a second later Delahanty loomed into sight, his face red. He fixed Bohlen with hooded blue eyes. “What the hell do you want?”
“What was that all about?”
“Tying my goddamn shoe. You mind?”
“You don’t have somebody to do that for you?”
Delahanty lowered his head. “You go to hell.”
Making a production of it, Bohlen inspected the clock. “Little early for you, isn’t it? I mean, you haven’t even been in for three weeks, from what I hear. You got a holo of yourself that swears at people when they open the door. I heard you put a hammock out back . . .”
“Okay, smartass,” Del said, reaching for the keyboard.
“No, wait.” Bohlen held up his hand. Del was good. He could lock up Ross’s unit from where he was sitting, no problem at all. “Del, come on. This is serious.”
Ignoring him, Delahanty went on keying.
“Del, I swear.”
Delahanty grinned up at him and hit the cancel button. “All right, what is it?”
“Got something for you to see.”
“Okay.” He reached out of screen range for a second. “My code with E appended.”
Bohlen shot him the data. “Came in yesterday. It’s hot, nobody else is onto it.”
Delahanty looked at the screen and moaned. “Ross, you call this hot? This weird shit has been around forever . . .”
“Last entry, Del.”
Mumbling to himself, Delahanty read through it. “Montana,” he said once, glaring at Bohlen as if he was scheming to make him look bad. Finally his eyes went wide and he raised his head. “Ross, what are you, nuts? They caught a guy!”
“Yeah, a guy. First burnout rolled through town. They ordered him from the perp catalogue . . .”
Del wasn’t listening. “. . . and those worthless spikes. Some damn-fool hackers. No tie-ins on the murders at all.” He waved a meaty hand. “It’s been checked, man. It’s a big ball of nothing.”
“Del . . .”
Shaking his head, Delahanty leaned forward until his face filled the screen. “Ross, those spikes were empty. The intrusions went nowhere. Nothing happened at site or anyplace else. No anomalous actions in any program. The killings could be anybody. They nabbed a guy out here last week with three heads in his freezer, and he didn’t have a circuit in his skull.” He fell back, arms spread wide. “So why waste the taxpayers’ money?”
“Could be piggybacking. Doesn’t have to be ripping a system—maybe he’s caching something.”
“Could be. And it could be it’s a short in a kindergarten show-and-tell unit.”
Bohlen shifted in his seat. “You ever find one? Or these phantom hackers either?”
Delahanty said nothing, but his expression of annoyance eased slightly.
“Last entry is from Montana.”
“Yeah? So what?”
“So if it’s a local glitch, how did it get there? Take a bus?” Bohlen plopped forward on his elbows. “A bank, Del. It’s a credit snatch. I think it’ll show up real soon. And Dexter—what’s he look like?”
“Like a loser.” Rubbing the top of his head, Delahanty inspected the data once more. After a moment he rolled his eyes to Bohlen. “Buffalo god talking to you?”
Bohlen grimaced. The buffalo god was Del’s version of situational awareness, a personal deity where Ross was concerned. Every time Bohlen guessed right, the buffalo god was responsible.
“You think this is hardcopy,” Delahanty said, settling back.
“It’s got the feel.”
Delahanty mulled it over. “So what do you want from me?”
“Ricelli was working on those spikes, right?”
“Aw, Ross. That stuff’s buried so deep, I don’t even know the filename . . .”
“So put Heller on it.”
“Heller ain’t here,” Del said disgustedly. “Cummins assigned him as liaison to some FBI sting operation. I’m holding the fort with two kids doing postgrad work.”
“Put them on it.”
Del threw a hand up. “All right. I’ll find it for you. When I get around to it.”
“You look real busy.”
“Ross . . .”
“Take you fifteen minutes.”
“Will you stop.” Delahanty shook his head at the alternate screen. “I don’t know. You could be right. But there ain’t been a thing since Key West, and you know what happened there. I been thinking maybe Harland’s right and we burned ’em all.”
“Bull.”
“Yeah, well there ain’t no army of ’em out there either. You can forget that. And what are you gonna do about it anyway? Cummins has got you chained there . . .”
“Ross!”
It was Lu. Bohlen looked over the top of the monitor. “Yeah?”
“Ironwood. It’s onscreen. You’d better take a look.”
He told Delahanty, “Call you back.” Del put on a stern expression and began to speak, but Bohlen cut him off.
The screen held a Crimewatch bulletin, addendum symbol flashing. He ran his eyes across the date and heading to the short paragraph below:
Butte Citizens’ Committee reports that Dexter, James apprehended for public drunkenness/lewd behavior and ejected from city on Sunday 2/12 at or about 0730 . . .
Last Sunday: the night of the murder, the night the bank was tapped. He ran through the rest quickly. Dexter had been released yesterday to the local Latin War Vets. Natural enough; they looked out for their own. The vets had filed suit against the sheriff’s department, Frostmoon, and Nast for false arrest and brutality. Yesterday . . .
He saw that the entry had been made a little after four. It had nearly been five when he talked to Nast.
He slammed the desktop. That son of a bitch had been jerking him. Nast had known then and there that Dexter was clean. The goddamn hick—frustrating to have your suspect evaporate and the vets rage at you, so let’s take a piece out of the next fed who calls. Work off a little steam. Never lay eyes on him again anyway.
He started to call Montana but stopped. No—let it go for now; he’d be paying the deputy a visit soon enough.
Bohlen chuckled sourly. He was getting ahead of himself, acting as if he were still on field duty and not a clerk. What he had to do was boot it upstairs so that Eddie could dither over it until Cummins got back. He knew that, but he ticked off the alternatives just for form’s sake. The Denver office was out. The supervisor there was a dumb kid Cummins had put in to answer the phones and make sure nobody stole any stationery. For all his guff, Del would wade right in, but Bohlen couldn’t have that—not until there was evidence in hand. Old Floyd had done pretty well nailing the Coast slot, and it would be a fool move to throw that away on a wildcat operation like this one. He owed Del a lot; everything, really. If Del hadn’t dusted that guy in Loisaida before he got off a second shot, Bohlen wouldn’t be around now to argue with him.
Of course, he could buzz Harland in Honolulu, and give him enough time to think how to fumble it as badly as he had Key West.
If such a thing was possible. Key West—an “unfortunate incident,” according to Mushmouth himself. What it had been was a massacre. Six imps blown away while trying to give themselves up, two of them women. How it happened Bohlen didn’t know; he’d been in the hospital at the time, growing a new liver, and when he got out, nobody was talking. He’d heard they’d taken sniper fire from the villa, but he didn’t think much of that story.
It shouldn’t have turned out that way. It couldn’t be justified, not as matters stood. If Marcus had been there and thought there was any chance the imps were sincere, he’d have walked right into that building. Alone, sniper or no, as ancient and frail as he was those last months.
Marcus Aurelius Amory. Bohlen once asked him about the name, and the old man had told him that it was in honor of the last great Stoic emperor. That had puzzled Bohlen; he’d always thought that the Roman emperors had partied and had a grand time.
Amory had been in charge of comp security for the old CIA at the tail end of the Cold War. He retired just as the 20th ran out, only to be called back at the outbreak of the Latin War. At first his only contribution had been to concur with the decision to shut down the national datanet and run critical systems in isolation. Amory was left idle afterward, until that idiot Kahn unleashed his pack of demented Utopians. From then on he had plenty to do.
They met the night of Bohlen’s first op, the raid on the Department of Transportation offices that bagged three imps and turned up the existence of what would later be known as the Stoner Gang.
Bohlen had been assigned to the outfit for only two days and was not happy. Pulled off the line in Nuevo Leon—due to the compsci minor he’d taken in college, he found out later—and shipped first to Laredo then to Tulsa then on to Washington, he was dumped in a hotel near the Mall, dragged out the next night, handed an M-24, and told to keep an eye on the rear exit of the DoT building while a team went in.
He’d been given no explanation beyond the fact that it was a cybertage matter, which puzzled him: that stuff was supposed to be over and done with. The war had opened with a wholesale effort to cripple the US datanet, which succeeded completely—Medrano would have just been another Hussein or Qaddafi if it hadn’t been for that. “Silicon Harbor” was carried out by illegals sent across the border and a few malcontents who worshiped Medrano because he was Montezuma’s reincarnation or something. As the Medis attacked, the datanet—a cool hundred billion’s worth of fiber optics—had gone down under an avalanche of viroids and trojans, not to mention more novel tricks. The hardbombs, for instance: vans loaded with superconducting coils charged to some unimaginable voltage and parked downtown or across from the local airbase. When the circuit was broken, several square miles were flooded with EM fields of a few million gauss, wiping out all magnetic media in the area.
The night of the raid had been wet, with a cold, steady drizzle, and he was still wearing desert-camo fatigues without even a jacket. He was leaning against a big ornamental planter as the twilight deepened, trying to figure out what to make of it all. One thing he knew: the rumors he’d heard about trained killers with computers in their heads were nonsense. They couldn’t fool him with that line.
He’d just about decided that even hunting Medis was better than this, when things broke: sirens blaring, lights flashing several floors up, gunshots and screams. He hunkered nervously against the concrete, handling the rifle carefully—the 24’s circuits were known to short out when the weapon got wet. He didn’t have long to wait. As chaos reigned overhead, the rear doors opened, and a panicked, howling mob burst out, what seemed like the entire shift doing their damnedest to run as far and fast as they could while making as much noise as possible.
He knew immediately what was happening; after all, Medrano had done the same thing during the invasion. These were decoys, nothing more. Ignoring the uproar, he aimed the rifle at the glass doors. A second later a bearded man emerged, wearing a business suit with an embroidered vest and appearing completely normal except for his clenched teeth and the machine pistol in one hand. Bohlen tracked him, waiting for the mob to thin out. The imp lent a hand by clouting a man in front of him with the pistol, catching sight of Bohlen as he did. He lifted the gun while Bohlen checked to see that no one was in the line of fire, but he raised it over his head before aiming, a stupid move out of Hollywood. The barrel was still dropping as Bohlen pulled the trigger.
The imp staggered but kept on coming. Bohlen fired again, astonished that the man didn’t go down, and again, as the pistol began flinging rounds over his head. Bohlen was already saying his goodbyes to the world when he pulled the trigger a final time and the imp—he didn’t know the word yet but it would soon fill his days—collapsed twenty feet in front of him.
It took the rest of the team fifteen minutes to get to him—understandably, since the operation had been a botch, ten people killed, including three of their own. He passed the time wiping the rain off his face, shaking his head at the questions from people who drifted back, and staring at the body. Four shots, and the man kept coming. The 24 was a dual-slug weapon; that meant eight rounds, point-blank, and the son of a bitch kept coming . . .
Bohlen remained quiet on the way to the offices, focusing only on the fact that he was going to get out of this as soon as humanly possible. That night, if it could be arranged.
The offices were a shabby basement filled with secondhand hardware. There the team leader—a guy in a trenchcoat with ex-CIA written all over him—pointed in Bohlen’s direction as he spoke to a thin old man in glasses, who then came over and asked him to step into his office.
Sitting down, the old man filled an ancient pipe before looking up at Bohlen in that way he had—over the top of his glasses, as if contemplating the most serious thing in the world. Then he smiled and said, “Tell me about it, son.”
Bohlen told him everything: the confusion, the terror, the way one woman had slipped coming out the door, the tricky electronics of the 24, the gross image of death on a rainy spring evening. He went on for what seemed an hour, not stopping when Amory poured him a shot of rye, a drink he’d never tasted before. “So, I don’t know,” he said finally, holding out the glass for a refill and noticing that his hand had ceased shaking.
Amory let him know: this wasn’t simply a matter of war-related sabotage, it was something new and strange, something that might make the war seem like a tussle in a local bar. He told Bohlen all that was known about the imps up to that moment, which wasn’t enough, but there would never be enough: the learning curve was damned steep where the chipheads were concerned.
“. . . it may be that they’re right, that this is the biggest step since the wheel. Or it may be the opening wedge of the worst tyranny this tired world has ever seen. Our job is to find out which.”
“But who’s behind it?” Bohlen was leaning forward, fascinated, the drink forgotten in his hand.
“Chartoff, Sachetti, Stoner, Kahn . . .” Amory frowned at the pipe bowl, as if suddenly aware of a flaw. “Could be any of them, or somebody I’ve never heard of.”
“But if you tracked them down . . .”
“All out west, Ross, and you know what conditions are there.” He reached behind him and picked up a book, a thick scholarly volume with nothing but point on the cover. “As for how we grasped the nature of the situation . . .”
Bohlen accepted the book: Homo Praestamus, by Nathan Kahn. He’d heard of it: a big campus bestseller about ten years ago. On the back cover a photo showed a cheerful face, bony and prognathic, what hair that remained barely combed. “I thought it would be another twenty years, if at all in my lifetime,” Amory was saying. He smiled, quick and sympathetic. “I was mistaken.”
He pointed with the pipestem. “Read it and tell me what you think,” he said. “Not tonight; you need your sleep. Take tomorrow off as well. But Thursday be here early.”
So Ross Bohlen met Marcus Amory, and he never looked back. Marcus was something new to him, something he hadn’t come across before: a truly civilized man. Decency was the word that accompanied any thought of Marcus. An odd word for a man who had spent his life in the dirtiest of professions, but the right word all the same. Marcus never lied, either to himself or the men under him, felt every blow they took, and never stopped seeking alternatives, for a way to bring the enemy into the light, as he had brought defectors out of the Marxist empires decades before.
In this, it was Marcus against the world: the government was filled with people capable of learning only one thing at a time, and what they’d learned from the war was that the way to deal with a threat was to smash it flat and keep smashing until nothing remained but a bloody pulp. Marcus explained the reason to Ross once: wars fought by democracies always ended that way. The Reconstruction, the Red Summer, a pol named McCarthy (Gene or Jim something), an episode called Watergate that Marcus himself had been vaguely involved in. War was unnatural, undemocratic, and un-American, so there had to be a scapegoat whenever one came along. It didn’t matter who; the more peripheral the better. “Beware the People, Ross,” Marcus said. “Most savage of the beasts of the earth for vengeance. Bogeymen are needed, and the implants are available.”
Bohlen hadn’t given him much help. Nobody had. He recalled the last time he saw Marcus, thin and ill, eyes fixed on the photo of one more bullet-ridden corpse. “Never forget that they’re human,” he said, “and thus pathetic. Don’t demonize them.”
That had been a bad operation, damn near a disaster. Two men down, the imp dead, as always. Bohlen was tired, numb, and disgusted. He was sure his face revealed it. He didn’t have much to say to Marcus. Looking back, he felt sure that the old man expected that. The thought was one of the few things that made him feel ashamed.
Now Marcus Amory was gone, cut down by a stroke while still in his seventies. The smashers had taken over. COSSF could end up just like the Bugs, or the FBI Latin Bureau, or the House Undemocratic Activities Committee, if things went on the way they were going. And there was nothing that Bohlen could do about it. That goddamn hillbilly . . .
The monitor beeped: Del calling back. He hit the keyboard.
Delahanty peered out at him. “What the hell’s going on?”
While he explained, Bohlen sent him the Dexter notification. Delahanty glowered at it, then turned back to him. “I tried to dig up that Ricelli stuff,” he said. “It’s not there.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Not in records, not in his personal file. Even the paper’s gone.”
Bohlen stared at him in silence. Scowling, Delahanty said, “Now don’t you tell me I didn’t look—”
“I’m not saying anything of the kind,” Bohlen said slowly.
“What are you thinking?”
“Damned if I know.”
“So what’s the next move?”
Bohlen smiled but said nothing.
“You better watch your step, Ross,” Del said, shaking his head. “Cummins is out to stomp you soon as you give him a chance. He’s been after you ever since you called him a hillbilly at that meeting . . .”
“He’s in Hawaii.”
“Ain’t far enough,” Delahanty grumbled. “Well, I suppose you can get a job with Hector. He needs people. Maybe he’ll let you clean ashtrays or something.”
“Nice to have a fallback.”
“Yeah. Well, good luck. You’re gonna need it.” Del gave him a smirk. “Montana. You know, Custer got his butt whipped right around there.”
“Least I’ll be in good company.”
Del’s image faded, and Bohlen realized that he was sitting hunched on the edge of his chair, as if preparing to climb into the screen. He sat back, fighting an urge to look over his shoulder.
There was an entire squadron of Zeros back there, and the buffalo god was roaring in his cave. Bohlen hadn’t lied to Del; he had no idea what to think. But one thing he knew: there was no question of merely filing it and sending it upstairs. This wasn’t simply a solitary chiphead running wild across the cold West. As to what it might be . . .
He glanced at the clock. Just after twelve. If they got a flight in an hour, they could be in Montana by, let’s see, take off two hours for Mountain Time . . . three o’clock. Set things up tonight and get cracking first thing tomorrow. Of course, Lu might not want to come along. In that case he’d go in alone. He’d need a full team from Del anyway once he got a line on something.
And Cummins? The devil could have him. He’d be sitting around eating burnt pig with his fingers for the rest of the week as it was. After that, Bohlen would see. There was a reg that covered this kind of situation, modeled after the concept of hot pursuit: an operative was to take any actions deemed necessary without notifying his superiors if he believed that any delay would result in loss of contact with a suspected CEI. Of course, it wasn’t meant to apply to somebody sitting at headquarters, but . . .
The worst that could happen was he’d be canned, and that was coming anyway. Better to go out on your feet than with your butt planted behind a desk.
He opened the bottom drawer. Inside was a shoulder holster and a pistol. Lifting them out, he inspected the gun. A Colt Python, thirty years old, the kind they didn’t make anymore. An antique in these days of comp bore alignments and laser sights. Del used to tease him about it, but Bohlen told him he considered it humanistic compared to the iron everybody else carried. Besides, there was a lot less that could go wrong with a revolver.
He got up and strapped it on, pausing to feel the scar tissue above his belt. Still a little tender, or was that only his imagination? Funny, you’d think a slug in the gut would have more of an impact, that he’d reflect on his mortality a little before raging back into the field. But he’d changed since that first time in the rain. Not that he’d become fearless, far from it. He knew fear, all right, but was always able to control it, and able, when the danger was done, to put it away where it couldn’t get at him. It was something he’d learned, perhaps from Marcus, perhaps from experience: that fear didn’t exist in things or events, only inside men. There was nothing out there but the world at large.
He walked to the door. Bracing himself with both arms, he looked out at Lu. She went on with what she was doing for a moment before turning. She frowned when she saw the gun.
“Time to put the warboots on, Louise.”
She dropped her hands in her lap. “Ross, what are you talking about?”
“What do you say we head out to Montana?”
He called Madeline while Lu made the arrangements. Maddie said little until he mentioned that Lu was coming along. “You look out for her, Ross,” she said fiercely. “I mean it.
“I hope you find whoever did it,” she said a moment later. “But I don’t know. He’s probably gone by now. Who’d hang around after doing a thing like that?”