Spook Country

What the hell was it, though?

Bigend’s port, she guessed. And Bobby so close by.

She turned right when she spotted Bobby’s street.

She’d lied to Bigend, she admitted to herself now, and it was bothering her. She’d told him she’d work with him as long he didn’t hold back information, or lie to her, and now she’d done exactly that, to him. She wasn’t comfortable with that. The symmetry was a little too obvious. She sighed.

She drove to the end of the block, turned right again, and pulled over, behind a rust-streaked dumpster with EAST VAN HALEN painted across its back in ru

She got her phone and Bigend’s scrambler out of her purse, sighed, and rang him back.

He answered immediately. “Yes?”

“Odile’s found his sister.”

“Very good. Excellent. And?”

“I’m near a place he has here. His sister told us where it is. She thinks this is where he’ll be.” She didn’t see any need to tell him she’d known this when she’d last spoken with him. She’d squared things.

“Is that why you’re a block east of Clark Drive?” he asked.

“Shit,” she said.

“This display only names the main streets,” he said, apologetically.

“This car’s telling you exactly where I am!”

“It’s a factory option,” he said. “A lot of Phaetons go to corporate fleets in the Middle East. Standard security feature, there. Why did she tell you, by the way? Do you know?”

“Because she’s fed up with him, basically. Not an easy sibling. I just saw your port, a minute ago. It’s down at the foot of the street.”

“Yes,” he said, “handy. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Look around a little.”

“Would you like me to send Ollie?”

“No. I doubt I’ll be long.”

“If I don’t see the car go back to the flat this evening, and I haven’t heard from you, I’ll send Ollie.”

“Fair enough.” She hung up.

She sat there, looking at East Van Halen’s dumpster. Beyond it, a few car lengths, was the opening into an alley. An alley that might lead, she supposed, to some rear entrance in whichever of these buildings was Bobby’s.

She got out, activating the Phaeton’s alarm system. “You take care of your crypto-luxurious ass,” she told it. “I’ll be back.”

66. PING

T ito sat on a paint-spattered steel stool, looking up at a dirty skylight of wire-embedded glass. Pigeons kept landing on its peak, and taking off, with a flutter of wings he doubted the others were hearing. Garreth and the old man were talking with the man who’d been waiting for them here, in this dim third-story space, in a city and country Tito had scarcely even thought about before.

The boat that had come to pick them up was white; long, low, very fast. The boat’s pilot had worn large sunglasses and a tight nylon hood, and had said nothing at all.

Tito had watched the island and its runway recede, and finally vanish, though it took a long time.

After changing directions several times, they’d approached another island. Cliffsides of soft, wind-eroded rock. A few small isolated houses, facing the sea. They’d followed the coastline to a wooden pier, jutting from a taller, more substantial-looking wharf. He’d helped Garreth swing the black plastic Pelican up out of the boat. It was too heavy to lift by its plastic handles, Garreth said; they might break, under the weight.

The pilot of the white boat, saying nothing, took it out fast, in a direction other than the one he’d come.

Tito listened to a dog barking. A man came to the railing of the high wharf and waved to them. Garreth waved back. The stranger turned away, was gone.

The old man looked at his watch, then at the sky.

Tito had heard the seaplane before he’d seen it, coming in only a few feet above the water. “Don’t say anything,” Garreth told him, as the plane’s propeller stopped and it floated the last few yards to the pier.

“How are you gentlemen?” asked the pilot, a man with a mustache, climbing down onto the nearest pontoon as Garreth held the plane’s wing.

“Very well,” said the old man, “but I’m afraid we’re overweight.” He indicated the Pelican. “Mineral samples.”

“Geologist?” the pilot asked.

“Retired,” said the old man, smiling, “but it seems I’m still hauling rocks.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” The pilot opened a hatch in the side of the plane, which looked nothing like the Cessna. It had only one propeller, and looked built for work. Tito watched as Garreth and the pilot wrestled the Pelican case off the dock and up into the hatch.

He saw the old man blow air between his pursed lips, relieved, as they got it into the plane without dropping it.

“How long will we be?” the old man asked the pilot.

“All of twenty minutes,” said the pilot. “Shall I call you a cab?”

“No, thank you,” the old man said, climbing up into the plane. “We have our own transportation.”

They landed on a river, near a very large airport, where Tito, still amazed at the mountains he’d seen in the distance, helped Garreth push the Pelican case and their other few pieces of luggage, on a cart, up a long ramp of steel mesh.

Tito sat on the edge of the cart, looking toward the river, where another seaplane was taxiing for takeoff in late-afternoon sunlight. Gravel crunched as Garreth and the old man drove up in a white van. Tito helped Garreth load the case and their other bags into it.

There were only two seats in the van, no side windows in the back. Tito settled himself, squatting, on the Pelican case. The old man looked back. “Don’t sit on that,” he said. “It wouldn’t be good for your descendants.” Tito moved away from the case, and used his own bag as a cushion instead.

After that, as they’d driven through a city, he’d seen almost nothing. Fragments of buildings, through the windshield and the rear windows. Until they’d arrived here, Garreth opening the rear doors onto an only partially paved alley, strange green ferns growing between broken asphalt and the peeling walls on either side. He’d helped Garreth with the Pelican case, up two flights of decrepit wooden stairs, and into this long, cluttered room.

Where this strange man, the one they called Bobby, had been waiting for them. Tito’s mother’s illness, which had begun in Sunset Park, where they had gone to stay with Antulio, after the attacks on the towers, had made him very anxious around people who behaved in certain ways.

He paced, this Bobby, and smoked, and spoke almost constantly. Garreth and the old man listened, listened and looked at one another.

Bobby said that it wasn’t good for him, doing this from home. It wasn’t good for him to be here, in his hometown, doing this, but it particularly wasn’t good for him to be here, in his own place, doing this, with the box a few blocks away. Tito looked at the Pelican case. Was this what Bobby meant by a box?

“But you knew that,” the old man said, quietly. “You knew that if it came here, it would be there.”

“They’ve pinged it three times already,” Bobby said. “Not part of the pattern. I think they’re here, and I think they’re pinging it from here, and I think they’re pinging it as they drive around, trying for a visual. I think they’re that close. Too close.” He dropped his cigarette, ground it under his shoe, and wiped the palms of his hands on his dirty white jeans.

What did “pinged” mean, Tito wondered.

“But, Bobby,” the old man said, softly, “you haven’t told us where it is, exactly. Where is it? Has it been off-loaded? We do need to know that.”

Bobby was lighting another cigarette. “It’s where you wanted it. Exactly where you wanted it. I’ll show you.” He crossed to the long tables, the old man and Garreth following. Bobby tapped anxiously on a keyboard. “Right here.”

“Which means they don’t have anyone on the inside, otherwise they’d shuffle it deeper into the deck.”