Spook Country

“So what do you expect to get out of this, if you can find out what’s in Chombo’s container?”

“No idea. None whatever. That’s exactly what makes it so interesting.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Intelligence, Hollis, is advertising turned inside out.”

“Which means?”

“Secrets,” said Bigend, gesturing toward the screen, “are cool.” On the screen appeared their images, standing beside the table, Bigend not yet seated, captured by a camera somewhere above. The Bigend on the screen took a pale blue cloth from his pocket, pulled out a chair, and began to dust its arms and back and seat. “Secrets,” said the Bigend beside her, “are the very root of cool.”

21. SALT OF SOFIA

T ito crossed Amsterdam, passing the gray, snow-dusted stalks of a makeshift public garden, then walked quickly along 111th, toward Broadway.

The snow had stopped falling.

He recognized his cousin Vianca in the distance, by the Banco Popular, dressed like a teenager. Who else would be out, he wondered, for his ride back to Chinatown?

By the time he’d reached the Broadway median, Vianca was no longer visible. Attaining the western sidewalk, he turned south, heading for the 110th Street stop, hands in his pockets. Passing a framing shop, he picked her up in the depths of a mirror, crossing diagonally, a few yards behind his left shoulder.

Descending into the tiled trench of the subway, thinly roofed with iron and asphalt, he saw his breath rising.

The number 1 local arrived, like a sign, just as he reached the platform. He would return slowly, on the 1 to Canal, then walk east. He boarded the train, certain that Vianca and at least two others were doing the same. Protocol, for the detection and identification of followers, required a minimum of three.

AS THEY LEFT Sixty-sixth Street, Carlito entered from the car behind. Tito’s car was almost empty. Vianca sat near the front end, apparently engrossed in a small video game.

Carlito wore a dark-gray topcoat, a scarf a shade lighter, black leather gloves that made it look to Tito as though his hands might be carved from wood, and black rubbers over the polished calfskin of his Italian shoes. He looked conservative, foreign, unassimilated, and somehow religious.

He seated himself to Tito’s left. “Juana,” he asked in Spanish, “she is well?”

“Yes,” Tito said, “she seems well.”

“You have met him.” It was not a question.

“Yes,” Tito said.

“You have your instructions.”

“Yes.”

Tito felt Carlito slip something into his pocket.

“Búlgaro,” Carlito said, identifying the object for him.

“Charged?”

“Yes. A new valve.”

The Bulgarian’s guns were close to half a century old now, but still functioned with great efficiency. It was sometimes necessary to replace the Schrader valve set into the flat steel reservoir that also served as a grip, but there were remarkably few moving parts. “Loaded?”

“Salt,” Carlito said.

Tito remembered the salt cartridges, with their yellowed glassine membranes sealing either end of an inch-long, strangely scented cardboard tube.

“You must prepare now, to go away.”

“For how long?” Tito knew that this was not an entirely acceptable question to ask, but it was the sort of question that Alejandro had taught him to at least consider asking.

Carlito didn’t answer.

Tito was on the verge of asking what his father had been doing for the old man when he had died.

“He must not be captured.” Carlito touched the knot in his scarf with his stiff, gloved hands. “You must not be captured. Only the item you are delivering must be captured, and they must not suspect you of having given it to them.”

“What do we owe him, Uncle?”

“He saw our way here. He honored his word.”

Carlito rose as the train pulled into Fifty-ninth Street. One gloved hand rested for an instant on Tito’s shoulder. “Do well, nephew.” He turned and was gone.

Tito glanced past boarding passengers, hoping to see Vianca still there, but she too was gone.

He reached into his jacket’s side pocket, finding the Bulgarian’s singular, meticulously made weapon. It was folded loosely, within a fresh white cotton handkerchief from China, still stiff with sizing.

On drawing it from your pocket, those around you might think you were about to blow your nose. Without looking, Tito knew that the cardboard cylinder of carefully milled salt filled the entirety of the very short barrel. He left it where it was. Now that the Bulgarian’s rubber gaskets had been replaced with silicone, an effective charge could be maintained for up to forty-eight hours.

The salt, he wondered, was it Bulgarian? Where had those cartridges been made? In Sofia? In Moscow, perhaps? In London, where the Bulgarian was said to have worked before Tito’s grandfather had brought him to Cuba? Or in Havana, where he’d lived out his days?

The train pulled away from Columbus Circle.

22. DRUM AND BASS

Pamela Mainwaring, English, with blond bangs entirely concealing her forehead, drove Hollis back to the Mondrian in one of the big silver Volkswagen sedans. She’d worked for Blue Ant previously in London, she volunteered, before leaving to do something else, but then had been invited here to help oversee the expansion of the firm’s local operation. “You hadn’t met Hubertus before,” she suggested, as they headed up the 101.

“Was it that obvious?”

“He told me, as he was leaving to meet you. Hubertus loves the opportunity to work with new talent.”

Hollis looked up at the passing, shaggy heads of palms, black against a grayish-pink luminosity. “Having met him, I’m amazed that I hadn’t heard of him before.”

“He doesn’t want you to have heard of him. He doesn’t want people to have heard of Blue Ant, either. We’re often described as the first viral agency. Hubertus doesn’t like the term, and for good reason. Foregrounding the agency, or its founder, is counterproductive. He says he wishes we could operate as a black hole, an absence, but there’s no viable way to get there from here.” They left the freeway. “Do you need anything?”

“Pardon me?”

“Hubertus wants you to have anything you might need. That’s rather literally anything, by the way, since you’re working on one of his special projects.”

“‘Special’?”

“No explanations, no goals cited, no budgetary cap, absolute priority in whatever queue. He describes it as a species of dreaming, the company’s equivalent of REM sleep. He believes it’s essential.” She took a card from a pocket in the VW’s sun visor and passed it to Hollis. “Anything. Just call. Do you have a car?”

“No.”

“Would you like this one? I can leave it for you.”

“No thanks.”

“Cash?”

“I’ll submit receipts.”

Pamela Mainwaring shrugged.

They rolled in, past the door sculptures. Hollis had her door unlatched before the car had come completely to a halt. “Thank you for driving me, Pamela. Nice meeting you. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Hollis closed the door. The silver sedan swung back out, onto Sunset, the lights of the Mondrian’s entrance diminishing in its bodywork.

A night security man opened the door for her, a sort of decorative grommet clamped through the lobe of his ear. “Miss Henry?”

“Yes?”

“Message for you at the desk,” he said, indicating the direction. She headed for the desk, passing a weird cruciform settee upholstered in virginal white leather.

“Here you are,” said the shirt model at the desk, when she’d identified herself. She wanted to ask him what he used for his eyebrows, but didn’t. He produced a square brown carton, twenty inches on a side, and had her sign the multicopy form attached to it.