Rob followed him outside to the rear deck and onto the lawn. Squadrons of mosquitoes had come out for their nightly strafing run, dancing around in the dying sunlight as the mozzie trap lured them across the grass. It didn't look like any of them ever made it back to HQ to warn their mates not to be fooled by the green metal thing. Mike folded his arms and turned his back to the house.
"What the
fuck?
" He rarely swore. "Did we both hear the same thing?"
"It's complete bullshit," Rob said. "You know that. I know that. Your dad knows that. I don't know what Kinnery believes, but I just want to know why your dad's humouring him."
"And you
really
don't believe any of it."
"Of course I don't. I'm just uneducated, not a moron."
"If Dad wasn't involved, I'd hand Kinnery the FBI helpline number and kick his ass out of here."
"But he
is
involved."
"Yes. And he's never asked me for a favour before."
Rob could see Mike groping for a reason not to let his dad down. He obviously thought he was in trouble.
"This sounds like kidnapping," Rob said. "Not an arrest. I'm with you, mate, but let's be clear this might be over the line."
"I don't want you involved. If anyone does it, I will."
"Come on, I'm your mate. Besides, I owe your dad. He's done everything for me. All the paperwork and permits and green card. He's entitled to his money's worth from me."
"This is insane."
"But your dad isn't. And by politician standards, he's clean, isn't he? That's the problem. You're worried that he's done something dodgy, yeah?"
"He'd have a reason." Mike chewed his lip, shaking his head slowly. "Okay, I've got to talk to him on his own. Maybe I can work out what we're really dealing with."
"What will you do if you find out he's been a naughty boy?"
Mike looked stricken for a moment. "It'll be a test of my prissy self-righteousness, then, won't it?"
"Well, there's no harm in doing a recce and reporting back." Rob wasn't sure if there was some test for shape-shifters that didn't involve silver bullets.
Fuck me, this really is mental. This definitely won't end well.
"All we've got right now is the word of a nerd web site and a mad scientist."
Mike stared down at his shoes for a moment, then turned around and started walking back to the house. "I'm glad it's not true, because I'd have to shoot that bastard on moral grounds."
He just wanted to be the good American, doing good things and championing noble causes. It wasn't a bad ambition. For a bloke with an Oxford degree and combat experience in some seriously nasty shit-holes, though, it was bloody naive. Maybe he wanted to stay that way. Rob chose his words carefully.
"I didn't think you were religious. Or is this about eggs and embryo stuff?"
"Among other things."
"You just can't trust these fuckers to know when to stop." Rob could imagine how all this was getting stirred into Mike's feelings about IVF. "Are you going to tell Livvie?"
"She needs to know what I'm doing."
"Okay."
"Like I said, you don't have to come with me."
"You know that's the biggest challenge you can give a Bootneck, don't you?" Rob gave him a friendly but pointed shove as they walked. "You seriously think I'm going to be out-machoed by a bloody Septic reservist? You big girl. Stand aside and let a man show you how it's done."
"We can take a look."
"Yeah. We can."
"And I wasn't Reserves."
Rob had no idea if he'd be aiding and abetting some kind of industrial piracy, but the one thing he was sure of was his loyalty and obligation to Mike. If they hit any snags, Leo had the money and clout to make trouble vanish. Besides, they were only doing a recce. There was no law against that.
Mike walked in and stood over Kinnery, staring down his nose at him in a very Leo kind of way. It was always interesting to watch sons turning into their dads.
"Subject to the location, we'll do a recon and take it from there," Mike said. "Dad, can I have a word, please?"
They left Rob alone with Kinnery. The scientist looked at Rob as if he was waiting for him to pull a knife.
"Ian's really into the military," Kinnery said awkwardly. "He'll probably enjoy your war stories."
"How normal is he?" Rob tried to find the right word. It was a pretend conversation, but he intended to be professional about it. "Is he going to huddle in a corner banging his head on the wall or something?"
"Actually, he's more socialized than I realised. He's managed to contact a journalist and handle a funeral, which takes some doing. He watches a lot of TV. I think he mimics what he sees."
"Got a recent photo?" Well, there was no harm in asking. Rob managed to keep a straight face. "I suppose not, eh?"
"If I did, I'd have no idea what he'd look like tomorrow."
"Location?"
"Athel Ridge. Washington."
"Can you draw the layout of the house? Doors, windows, lines of sight?"
"Sure."
"Any neighbours?"
"Not nearby. They're pretty well off the grid. Maggie — Ian's guardian — was paranoid. Rightly so, as it turns out."
"What kind of
off-grid
? Are we going to need a fifty cal and APCs to go in there?"
"No, not crazy preppers. Hippy greens a couple of miles away."
"Dogs? Firearms?"
"Just greyhounds. Nothing aggressive. Maggie rescued strays."
"But is he armed? I know you lot like to be seriously tooled up. As do I."
"As far as I know, no assault weapons and no handguns. Just a couple of small calibre rifles or shotguns. Farmer variety."
"You know those things can still kill, don't you? Never mind. Body armour's never out of fashion."
And it's all good practice. Staves off skills fade. No different from raiding compounds in Afghan.
Rob resisted the temptation to look up the satellite view on his phone. They'd have to use paper maps or offline satnav in case someone could link the web searches to this address. When Mike and Leo came back, it was hard to tell if anything had been thrashed out. Rob would find out later. In the meantime, he'd take the planning seriously. He was a pro. He couldn't think any other way.
"Okay," Leo said. "You take my plane as far as Idaho. Then do the last leg by car to cover the tracks. That minimizes the journey time, and Ian doesn't have to mix with the public. And you can transport whatever hardware you need."
Rob loved the way Leo just lobbed in his private jet and threw them the keys like it was the family car.
Hardware. Yeah. Might as well go armed and armoured, just in case.
They ended up in Mike's study, poring over maps. Using Kinnery's floor plan, Rob mapped out lines of sight, identified laying-up positions, and worked out points of entry. It felt just like an exercise: you knew it wasn't real, but you gave it all you had, made it as authentic as you could, and lulled yourself into a temporary state of belief that you were at war. Rob was back doing what he knew best and excelled at. However daft the job sounded, he was looking forward to it.
"Can Ian control these changes?" Mike asked. "Can he use it to evade us?"
Kinnery gave him an odd look. Maybe it hadn't crossed his mind. "Up to a few weeks ago, he thought he was having hallucinations. So I doubt he's worked out how to do that yet. That's assuming he can control it at all."
Leo and Kinnery stayed for a quick dinner and freshened up before heading straight back to Washington. That was a lot of driving for anyone, let alone two older guys, even if they were sharing the load. Mike watched the BMW's tail lights disappear down the drive into the darkness, shaking his head.
"He's crazy," he said. "They're too old to do all that driving."
Rob was waiting for something more informative than that. "Well? What did he say when you got him on his own?"
Mike shook his head again. "That he has to take Kinnery's story at face value. I said that we'd just observe what we could and play it by ear."
"Is that it?"
"Is that what?" Livvie walked up behind Mike. He flinched as if she'd pinched his arse. "Or is this opsec that you can't mention?"
"No, I have to tell you, honey," he said, steering her towards the kitchen. "It's just bizarre. Rob and I need to be away for a few days."
Rob was halfway down the hall when he heard Livvie laughing her head off. He took that as a vote for the disbelief camp. He expected Leo to call the next day to apologize and explain that it had all been some complicated sting to get Kinnery to do something. But when the call came, it was just travel arrangements to meet the Gulfstream at the small airfield west of Athel Ridge and then collect a car in Idaho.
Rob thought it over as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, running the clippers through his hair. He couldn't see much grey. He still had time on his side. Once they'd knocked this shit on the head, they could get on with what really mattered – working out what two middle-aged blokes with experience and contacts could do next. They weren't getting any younger, and whether Mike and Livvie had a baby or adopted a kid, Mike's life was going to change more than he could possibly imagine. Nothing could really prepare him for being a dad. Rob was still grappling with it even now.
But they were professional problem-solvers. They'd work something out. Rob was certain of it.
LANSING
, MICHIGAN
JULY.
Dru was probably already too late.
The clock was ticking. She tried to think like a man who'd kept a secret for nearly twenty years and had now been exposed. Kinnery would cover his tracks as fast as he could, but the trail had been cold for a long time. Her chances of turning up anything useful on him now were slim.
But I don't have to catch him. I just have to find out what he did when he left. If he did anything, he couldn't have done it alone. But why did it go quiet for so long?
All she had to do to save her job was to keep Weaver happy, but it was going to be hard to prove a negative. She gulped her coffee, impatient to leave for the office. Clare walked into the kitchen, tying her hair back with an elastic band.
"Are you back from Mars yet, Mom?'
"Pardon?"
"You've been really distracted. Is it a new man?"
If only. When was the last time I had a date?
"I've got a big project at work," Dru said. "So don't go telling your father crazy things about men, or it'll be even harder to get any child support out of him."
"Well, whatever it is, I'm glad you're happier."
The job would never be a source of joy and satisfaction, but Dru felt better for having a goal. This was real investigative work, and she loved a good puzzle. Solving puzzles imposed clarity and order on the chaotic unknown. It gave her control in a world where she felt she had none.
Yes, I know that sums up my neuroses perfectly. But at least I know what they are.
Dru dropped Clare at Rebecca's and headed for the office to carry on sifting through KWA's paper archives while she waited for the Vancouver agency to open. Assembling all the internal documentation on Kinnery had taken a few days because she'd requested files by year to disguise exactly whose data she was looking for. When she walked into her temporary office in the basement, the brown, blue, and red boxes were stacked in front of the desk like a playground fort. They smelled
ancient and musty.
Weaver had personally signed out the Ringer files to avoid awkward questions. She opened the first box and fanned out a few folders on the desk.
Should I be looking at classified material? Should KWA have shredded this or handed it to the DoD?
She really wasn't sure. She reassured herself that it was solely between her and Weaver.
Besides, she wasn't interested in scientific data. She was just looking for names and places to map Kinnery's associations.
Who would Kinnery ask to carry genetic material for him?
It wasn't like smuggling drugs. The risks were different, but so was the nature of the trust that Kinnery would have to put in his accomplice. His mule could just walk away with the goods at any time. There wasn't anything that cops would find if they stopped and searched the guy. It was a far cry from someone swallowing heroin-filled rubbers that could burst and kill them if they didn't crap them out in time, or carrying a suitcase full of bagged cocaine.
Dru wrote the growing list of names, companies, and locations on sticky notes so that she could move them around on the desk pad to try different combinations and maybe spot a pattern. None of this could be committed to her computer to leave temporary files or even trackable keystrokes. Weaver had insisted on absolute secrecy. She took the desk pad home each night, and any calls or searches she made were via two unregistered burner cells that she kept for sensitive enquiries.
Who would Kinnery rely on?
You don't pluck the people you really need to trust out of thin air. You already know them. So it's someone Kinnery's sure won't disappear, blab, or sell out to a rival. And someone he can keep tabs on. If he did it, it was probably just before he left KWA.