Steal Across the Sky (23 page)

“—were their target. Are you one of the Witnesses?”

“I—”

“You are, aren’t you? You’re Soledad Arellano. Different nose and hair, but . . . yeah, you’re her.”

She stared at him helplessly. He caught the look, smiled, and took her hand.

“You’re afraid now that I’ll blow your cover. Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m a very trustworthy guy, you’ll see. James Hinton.”

“I’m not—”

“It’s okay. Just say, ‘Hello, James.’ Come on, you can do that, a bright star-traveling girl like you.”

Despite herself, she smiled. “Hello, James.”

“Good. Perfect. Now I’m going to wait with you until you have news about your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. But he’s my best friend.”

“Better yet.” James still held her hand. Soledad, a strange warmth creeping through her, didn’t pull it away.

FENGMO WAS IN SURGERY
for two hours, then taken to Recovery. A doctor in bloody scrubs came out to talk to Soledad, who said she was Fengmo’s sister. This was ethnically unlikely, but the doctor, harried and weary, didn’t care. She told Soledad that Fengmo would be taken to the ICU and Soledad should wait outside that unit until she could see him.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Third floor, C Wing.” The doctor disappeared.

James said, “Soledad, listen. By now the press will have Fengmo’s name and they’ll have found out that he’s a longtime friend of yours. If you go to the ICU, they’ll be on you like cold on space. I’m surprised they
haven’t found you here. If you wait somewhere—maybe in the cafeteria—I’ll go wait by the ICU and bring you word.”

“Why are you taking all this trouble for me?” It came out much sharper than she’d intended.

He said, “I like you.”

Her gaze flew to his. Men didn’t use that tone to Soledad, at least not men who looked like James. She’d had lovers, sure—but not . . . not like James Hinton.

“Go to the cafeteria,” he said gently.

She went, feeling the warmth slide along her chest, her arms, her neck, warring with the dread she felt for Fengmo.

HE WAS IN A COMA
, the doctors said. He might or might not come out of it, but there was considerable trauma to the head and there would probably be some brain damage. James told her this in a deserted corridor by Diagnostic Imaging, the cafeteria having closed hours ago. He held tightly on to her hand. She didn’t cry, just looked at him numbly.

“I can drive you home, if you like. But if you don’t want me to know where you live, I can get you a cab, or . . . whatever you like.”

It was four in the morning. The maglevs to upstate had stopped running hours ago. A cab would cost a huge amount. She couldn’t think. Finally she said, “A hotel . . . if there’s a cheap hotel around here. . . .”

“I wouldn’t trust any cheap hotel in this neighborhood. Listen, if you’ll trust me . . . my place isn’t that far. I promise I’m not an ax murderer.”

She studied him. Even through her exhaustion and dread she trusted her own instincts: He wasn’t an ax murderer. Nor a rapist, nor a thief.
I like you
.

He took her to a very small fourth-floor apartment on the West Side. Sparsely furnished, clean. She took off her shoes and fell asleep as soon as her head rested on the sofa, barely feeling James cover her with a blanket.

But after just a few hours, she woke. Pale winter light filtering through lowered blinds, the sound of garbage trucks banging Dumpsters.
Fengmo
. She cried out. There had been terrible dreams: herself trying to kill Cam,
stalking her with a spear tipped with fire, waiting for the moment when Cam’s personal shield had been lowered and Soledad could spit her like a pig.

James was there, then, sitting on the sofa beside Soledad, putting his arms around her. She shoved him away, but the next moment she collapsed against him and finally, for the first time in years, let tears come in the presence of another human being.

FRANK CALLED HIS GOVERNMENT CONTACT
, Jim Thompson, on his cell. A cell wasn’t secure, of course, so all he could say was, “Meet me at Addie’s in an hour, okay?”

“You got it,” Thompson said.

There was no Addie’s. Frank and the agent had worked out a code to avoid the press jackals that just wouldn’t quit on getting that interview Frank was never going to give. To avoid, too, the occasional nut with a gun. Although Frank had received far fewer death threats than some of the other Witnesses. In his opinion, this was because he minded his own business, was an ex-cop, and looked like a normal person, not a pony-tailed leftie like Andy DuBois or a fake Hollywood starlet like Cam O’Kane or a snobby so-called intellectual like Jack Jones. The only other normal-looking American in The Six was Sara Dziwalski, trying to do her work as a nurse and be left the hell alone.

“Addie’s” was actually Mike Renfrew Toyota, on Culver Road. Frank rode his Harley there; on a bike it was easy to lose any tail, although Frank didn’t see anybody following him. But you couldn’t ever be too sure. Mike Renfrew was an old friend and his people were reliable. He let Frank leave the Harley in the service bay, behind the tire rack, and Jim picked up Frank on the back lot.

“Hey,” Jim said. “How you doing?”

“Fine,” Frank said. “You?”

“Can’t complain. Something up?”

“Yeah. Can we get coffee?” He wanted to sit face-to-face with Jim, easier to gauge reactions that way. Jim seemed like a good guy, but he was still government, and his interests were not the same as Frank’s.

They drove to a diner out on the highway. Red plastic booths, napkin
dispensers on the table, no pop-ups at the slots. Frank put on his sunglasses and baseball cap and pulled the brim low. The place was full of lunchtime trade, but nobody glanced twice at them. Jim ordered coffee and Frank added cherry pie. He had a sweet tooth, and although Ma was a good cook, she didn’t bake much.

“Jim, I want to see Lucca Maduro in Canada.”

The agent blinked. “Lucca? Why?”

“That’s my business, so far. I’ll tell you when the time is right.”

Jim stirred non-dairy creamer into his coffee. “If I know what this is about, maybe I can help.”

“You can help by getting me over the border with no publicity, and then in to see Lucca. You said the Canadians are cooperating with us.”

“They are. But Maduro’s not very cooperative.”

“So I hear.” Frank sipped his coffee. He took it black and hot. “Can you do it?”

“I don’t know. I’m being straight with you, Frank. Maduro might be more receptive if we could tell him something, anything, to convince him that you have something important to say.”

That was fair. Of course the Agency—whichever one Jim was really with, FBI or CIA or NSA or Homeland or whatever—also wanted the information for themselves. But Frank had read how stubborn Lucca could be, and Frank could well see that something might be needed to convince him.

He said, “Let me think about that for a few minutes, Jim.”

“Sure.” Jim drank more of his coffee and waited. The cherry pie came and Frank started in on it.

Frank didn’t like Lucca Maduro. He’d met him during the orientation the Atoners had given all of them on the moon before the voyage out, in those bare gray rooms under the alien Dome. Frank had sized up Lucca as a spoiled rich kid. Smart, yes, he’d give the Italian that, after all Lucca had gone to some classy university in Britain and his English was as good as anybody’s. But Lucca was too smooth, too polished in that accent that drove all the girls crazy. Frank felt that Lucca looked down on the ordinary people who’d been accepted as Witnesses, people like himself and Sara Dziwalski and Rod Dostie. Frank had felt the same way about Hans Kramer and Amira Gupta and Jack Jones. Snobs.

But then Frank found out that Lucca had been married and his wife had been killed by a drunk driver. That changed Frank’s feelings a little. He hated drunk drivers, and when he’d been a cop he’d done his best to get the book thrown at every single one he caught. Irresponsible murderers, in his view. And if Lucca was grieving over his wife, then maybe that explained why he sometimes looked like he had a stick up his ass. Frank hadn’t liked him any better, but he’d cut Lucca some slack.

It wasn’t until they all got back home that Frank started to respect Lucca. First, the man wasn’t trying to capitalize on his fame. Like Sara, like Frank himself, Lucca just wanted to get on with his life, and the jackals wouldn’t let him. So he had taken a time-out and was waiting out his fifteen minutes of fame in Canada, since he was a British citizen as well as an Italian one and everybody knew that Italy was a country full of crazies anyway. Hiding wasn’t Frank’s way, but he could understand it. Lucca hadn’t sold his moon rocks on eBay, hadn’t gone all trashy glitter like Cam O’Kane, wasn’t New Age goofy like Andy DuBois out there in California.

But, more important, Lucca was the only one of “The Six” who didn’t believe that the people on Kular could actually see and talk to the dead. He was wrong—Frank knew what he’d seen on Susban—but Lucca stuck to his beliefs, and Frank had to respect that. Most people caved when they got a lot of group pressure from a lot of people who believed the opposite of their own conclusions. Not Lucca. He might be aloof and chichi and too snobby for his own good, but he had integrity. He wasn’t any kind of politician. You could trust the word of a guy like that.

And Lucca had money. A lot of money. You couldn’t believe everything in the news, not by a long shot, but that seemed true. Frank had seen the pictures of the vineyards Lucca’s family owned in Italy, the bank in Rome, the department stores in London. What Frank had in mind was going to take money.

Jim Thompson was still waiting. The waitress refilled both their coffees. Frank said, “Tell Lucca that I have something to tell him that is brand-new information about something he cares about.”

Jim said, “Brand-new information?”

“Yes.” He met the agent’s eyes directly. “Something I left out of my debriefing. And yes, I’ll tell you eventually, Jim. But I need to talk to Lucca first.”

If Jim was angry, if he was thinking
lies
or even
treason
, he didn’t show it. The man was good. He was, in fact, what Frank would have liked to be if he hadn’t discovered how government really worked. Police department politics, Washington politics—no different. But that was water under the bridge. The important thing was what Frank had to do now, to set things right with God.

To atone.

He hadn’t thought of it like that before, and he didn’t like thinking of it that way now. Aligning himself with the aliens—
He
hadn’t committed any huge crime against humanity. Just the opposite. He was going to help humanity, by doing God’s work.

“So can you get me in to see Lucca?”

“I’ll see what I can do. Meet me back at Addie’s late this afternoon? Say, four o’clock.”

That fast. Despite himself, Frank was impressed. Jim was taking this seriously, so maybe the government—both governments, the Canadian, too—would take it seriously as well. Jim might be able to bring this off.

But all Frank said was, “Good.” Expressionless, both men put money on the table—Frank always insisted on paying his own tab—and left the diner, just as the waitress came up to ask if Frank wanted any more pie.

CHIEF OF STAFF WALTER STEINHAUER
(
WS
):
Madam President?

PRESIDENT:
Come in, Walt. Have you seen this press statement from

Harry Melson?

WS:
Yes, ma’am.

PRESIDENT:
He wants the U.S. Air Force or NASA or somebody to blow the Atoner base to Kingdom Come! What’s wrong with those voters down in Georgia?

WS:
Maybe it’s the heat. Madam President, we’ve heard from one of the special agents assigned to the Witnesses.

PRESIDENT:
What is it? Has there been contact with the aliens?

WS:
No, nothing so juicy. But Frank Olenik wants us to arrange a meeting with Lucca Maduro, through the Canadians. Olenik told his handler that he has important information for Maduro, quote, “something I left out of my debriefing,” unquote.

PRESIDENT:
How serious do you think it is? Which one is Olenik, again?

WS:
The ex-cop. He’s kept a low profile, and his contact says he’s pretty reliable.

PRESIDENT:
Not all that reliable, if he lied in his debriefing. What do you think?

WS:
I think we should do all we can to get him in to see Maduro. Olenik seems to trust his handler, and this is our best chance of finding out what this is all about.

PRESIDENT:
Could be it’s all about nothing.

WS:
Could well be.

PRESIDENT:
But I think you’re right. If the Atoners won’t talk to us—Still nothing to NASA or the UN or SETI?

WS:
Nothing.

PRESIDENT:
Well, if the aliens won’t talk to us, we’ll have to get information from anyone who will. Get the ball rolling with the Canadians. And Walt—

WS:
Yes, ma’am?

PRESIDENT:
Try to find out if maybe Harry Melson was dropped on his head as a baby.

WS:
That would explain a lot, yes.

PRESIDENT:
Lord preserve me from elected idiots and inscrutable aliens. I should have been a plumber. No, don’t answer that, Walt.

WS:
I’ll just go talk to Ottawa now.