Reflex (38 page)

Millie felt like throwing up. "Puts a different meaning on 'cross my heart and hope to die.' I killed him, didn't I?"

"Whoa, girlfriend. You put that thing in him?"

"If I'd just left him alone—"

"Like he left
you
alone?"

Millie didn't say anything for a moment. "I wonder if all of his people have them. I don't suppose any of those other guys you arrested on Fourteenth Street have scars under their collarbones?"

Becca was silent for a moment. "Now
that's
a scary thought. I doubt it, though. When we processed them in they went through the usual metal detectors and wand scans. Still, I'll call over and see what got put in 'scars and marks' on their booking sheets."

Millie said, "They might not know enough to warrant the implant. Maybe only the upper echelon get it."

"People who know something worth telling?"

"Those who know who their boss is."

A name she thought she could supply.

It was six-thirty when Davy awoke. He put on his robe and stuck his head out into the hall. The window at the east end of the hall showed dim light without.
Morning, then. Not evening.
He'd slept thirteen hours straight through. His stomach rumbled and he remembered he'd missed supper.

When he walked into the breakfast room Hyacinth was wearing much the same outfit she'd worn in Nigeria—bush pants, sports shirt, and a photojournalist's vest.

She looked at Davy and raised her eyebrows. "Don't we look nice. What do you think this is, a dance?"

He was wearing khaki's, a starched white shirt, a blue blazer, and a pair of sunglasses perched in his hair. He ignored her and went to the sideboard. The smell of bacon was tantalizing—far more interesting than Hyacinth's comments.

"How are you going to keep your girlish figure?" Hyacinth asked as he piled the plate high.

"Skipped supper."

There was a single poached egg and a piece of dry toast on Hyacinth's plate. "So I heard. What was that about?"

"Tired. Nigeria." He shrugged. Let them draw their own conclusions.

"So, explain the outfit. Don't you think you'll stick out dressed like that?"

Davy paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "You've never been to Caracas, I take it."

Hyacinth narrowed her eyes. "Why do you say that?"

"Strikes and killings notwithstanding, it's a modern city—subways, skyscrapers, the whole twentieth-century thing. And they dress up. Women tend to wear dresses. I understand—you have your own unique style. You like standing out in a crowd, having people look twice at you, having them remember your
face."
He resumed eating.

Before they left, Hyacinth went back upstairs and changed into a green dress and a matching, slightly oversized jacket. When he picked her up for the jump, he felt the gun in the shoulder holster.

Caracas was gorgeous. The weather was dry and warm and a brisk breeze whipping around the Avilas had swept the smog away. After chilly New England and sweltering Nigeria, it was like heaven.
Even when you're accompanied by the devil.
Davy remembered Sojee's words.
Correction: a minion of demons.

They arrived standing on a nest of cardboard and torn blanket. Davy's jump site was a nook between the subway entrance and some bushes at the edge of the plaza. Apparently someone was sleeping there but, luckily, not at this moment.

The sidewalks were full and street traffic jerked along to the staccato beat of horns. A man on his way out of the subway watched Davy and Hyacinth come out of the nook and raised his eyebrows at Davy, then grinned. Davy shrugged and smiled back.
Well, we know what
he's
thinking.

Hyacinth was blinking in the sunlight and looking across the road at the huge circular fountain in the middle of the plaza and the gold-tinted skyscrapers behind. She shifted her gaze up to the giant Pepsi globe atop a nearby twenty-two-story building.

Davy took her arm and pointed. "There. That's the bus stop where they'll pick us up."

"Yes. I
know."

The stoplight changed and a stream of morning commuters flowed across the street, passing them left and right on their way into the subway. Davy felt Hyacinth tense.

He threaded his way through the crowd and stood behind a group queuing up at the bus stop. Hyacinth took a moment to join him. She was visibly nervous. "I didn't know the environment would be so crowded."

"It's the end of rush hour. Five million people. Busy, busy, busy."

Hyacinth took the radio from her purse and inserted an earphone. She talked, then listened, briefly. "They're circling the park. They were here but the police chased them out of the bus stop."

Two traffic police in white pith helmets were trying to untangle a snarl of honking taxis at the entrance to
Paseo Colón.
At the far corner stood two soldiers in camo battle dress with slung rifles.

He let his eyes wander past the skyscrapers. The air was clear and he could plainly see the brown and red brick barrios on the lower slopes of the Avilas. Deathtraps, just waiting for another flood of '99. Deathtraps in other ways, too. Criminal attacks, disease, malnutrition, police, army, both pro- and anti-Chavez elements.

The high crime rate wasn't the only reason Davy avoided Caracas and, as usual, he felt guilty for it.

It took ten minutes for the car to make the circle. Davy hoped like hell that they hadn't screwed up the placement of the cars carrying the keys. At Hyacinth's direction he climbed into the back seat of the shiny green Land Rover with dark-tinted windows.

The driver was a local hired for his knowledge of city traffic—not, they found, for his English.

Hyacinth became dangerously still when the driver shrugged helplessly at her directions. Before she reacted badly Davy said, "A la Embajada de Estados Unidos, por favor."

"¡Claro que si!"

With no traffic, the trip to the U.S. Embassy would've taken less than fifteen minutes. It took forty-five. Davy wondered what it would've been like two hours earlier, at the height of rush hour.

Normally, he would've enjoyed the drive, but they were behind a diesel bus belching large clouds of noxious fumes and, combined with the jerking stop and slow traffic, it was making him carsick.
I hope it's car sickness.
He wasn't feeling the buzzing feeling in his throat that normally accompanied the device-induced nausea, but he was far more susceptible to motion sickness than he'd been before they'd done this thing to him.

He felt the anger rising again, the rage. It was hard not to lash out. He knew he could kill Hyacinth at any time, jumping behind her and striking her down with a blunt object or, if he chose, jumping her fifteen hundred feet in the air above Ground Zero, the place that used to be just outside the observation deck of the World Trade Center. He could leave her hanging in the air and jump away again, without having to see her impact.
A nicely sterile approach, like launching missiles against distant targets.

Very brave.

The thought made him shudder as the anger mixed with shame. He leaned back and closed his eyes for the rest of the journey.

The embassy was relatively new, built back off the streets, designed to keep car and truck bombs at a safe distance. Hyacinth took off her jacket as they approached and Davy realized she was shrugging out of her shoulder holster at the same time. Below the level of the window, she removed the gun and harness from the folds of the jacket, wrapped the straps around the holstered gun, and slid it under the seat before her. After she'd redonned her jacket, she reached into her purse and took out a passport. "Here."

It was his and it wasn't. Even the number was correct, but it was shiny new. His passport, back in the Aerie and replaced two years before, was already worn and soft. While he rarely went through customs anymore, he always carried it when he was out of the U.S.
Unless I'm traveling on an NSA passport.

"You put in for a replacement?"

"No. They change the number if your passport gets lost. We had his one... made up."

"It looks good." He was flexing the hologram and looking at the security threads and watermark. "I'm surprised you gave me one with my own name."

"They don't just
look
at a passport anymore. Not at a U.S. embassy. They scan the barcode and pull the record. The number has to be right and the face has to be right. Earlier this year there were bombings at both the Colombian and Spanish embassies. We have to go through this at least once, to get inside."

He jerked his chin toward the gun under the seat. "And I guess they must have metal detectors." At Hyacinth's raised eyebrows he said, "I avoid embassies in general. Too many video cameras."

The Land Rover pulled up to the curb and Hyacinth said, "Come on."

There was a crowd of Venezuelans at the gate, but they were being turned away, for the most part. Davy heard one of the marine sentries repeating the same lines over and over again in Spanish: "U.S. Visa services for Venezuelan citizens by appointment only. Pay your application fee at the
Banco Provincial,
then call the automated system at the embassy to obtain an appointment."

Their U.S. passports got them through the gate to a smaller line at the building entrance. When it was their turn, Hyacinth produced two cards, saying, "We've got pacemakers."

The marine raised his eyebrows. "Both of you?"

"It's how we met," she said, smiling. "In post-op."

Instead of making them walk through the main metal detector, they used a hand wand and Davy had to remove his belt and suffer his shoes to be x-rayed. Hyacinth's purse was completely emptied. When asked, Hyacinth said, "We're here to register for the Warden program."

"Ah, so you'll be in the country for a while?"

"Six weeks, hopefully."

"Citizen Services, second floor."

There, Hyacinth filled out the contact information and a photocopy was made of the main pages of each of their passports—"to expedite replacement if you're robbed or if you lose it."

Looking over Hyacinth's shoulder as she filled in the form, he learned that their purpose in visiting Venezuela was "educational."
For whom?
And that Hyacinth was not going under her own name.

Their ostensible business complete, Hyacinth said, "Is there a restroom on this floor?"

"Out the door and to your left. On the other side of the cafeteria."

"Thanks!"

There were video cameras in the hall, in Citizen Services, in the stairwell, and in the cafeteria but not, apparently, in the bathroom. Pursuant to instructions, Davy acquired an unmonitored jump site within, choosing the large handicapped access toilet stall.

The Land Rover pulled up as they exited the gate. Hyacinth said, "Go to the other side but don't get in." She climbed in and shut the door; by the time Davy opened the far door, she'd retrieved her gun and holster from under the driver's seat and slid across. She stepped out onto the pavement and shut the door behind her. The dark-tinted windows and the bulk of the Land Rover shielded them from the embassy.

"Back to the Vineyard," Hyacinth said.

Davy lifted her and jumped.

Conley joined them for lunch. "All done?" he asked Hyacinth.

Hyacinth inclined her head. "For now."

Conley's mouth twitched up. "All right." He looked at Davy. "This afternoon, then."

Conley put a milliwatt radio transmitter in Davy's room. He measured its output with a little handheld RF meter. "Right. I've got a signal anywhere in this room. Let's walk down to the beach."

The signal dropped to undetectable levels by the time they reached the courtyard. They went all the way down the boardwalk to the beach. It was cloudy again and the chill wind from the east made Davy sink his head down into the collar of his jacket. He thought wistfully about the weather in Caracas.

On the beach, Conley examined the meter again. "Zilch. Okay, to start, I want you to jump back to the room, count to five, and jump back. Ready?"

"All right." He did it, using the five seconds to take a hat from the wardrobe. Back on the beach Conley was still looking at the meter. "Right. Pretty much what I expected. There was a transitory spike when you left and one when you came back. So, you want to try what we talked about—the jumping without jumping?"

Davy did
not
want to. Not in front of Conley or any of
them.
"Sure," he said. He jumped back to the room, waited a silent "one-one thousand" and jumped back. "Hmm. Jumping without jumping. Let me try again."

He just stood there and let his stare go vacant. After about ten seconds he jumped back to the room again, counted slowly to two, and jumped back. He shook his head in feigned frustration. "Sorry. Not working. Any suggestions?"

Conley pursed his lips. "How about you just try doing it as fast as you can? I mean, back and forth without any sort of pause?"

He put a doubtful expression on his face. "I can try, I suppose."

He jumped and after a beat he jumped back to the beach. He kept doing it without increasing the frequency—a jump and a jump and a jump and a jump. After doing this for twenty or so seconds, he began introducing more delay, waiting a fraction of a second more each time. He kept this up for another half minute and then stopped, on the beach, and staggered for effect.

"Dizzy. Got to sit down." He dropped to the sand, cross-legged and put his hands to his head. "It's not working."

Conley looked worried. "Okay—sit for a few minutes, we'll try again after you rest."

This was how they spent the next hour. Finally the combination of no results and increasing cold caused Conley to call a halt.

Davy jumped them both back to the room, then staggered across to the bed. "It's too big a drain."

Conley eyed him speculatively and Davy wondered if he saw right through his pseudo-cooperation. Conley faced the mirror and said, "Turn the beach off, please." He turned back to Davy and said, "I'll have to rethink this. You looked wiped—perhaps you should take a nap."