Burn (23 page)

Chapter 34

When you walk toward the light, the shadows fall behind.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Rico Toledo struggled up the dark stairway to Spook’s bar, his arms trembling to the point of cave-in after a long, hot day on crutches and canes. A crystal doorknob outfitted the ornate, antique door, and Rico was sure that the doorknob provided Father Free’s
cooperativa
with a palm-and-thumb scan of everyone who entered. Father “Luke the Spook” Free was nowhere in sight, which meant he was probably behind the two-way mirror, repairing the damage to the Archbishop’s transmitter. Martial law locked up the phone system, so Rico had a strong personal interest in several of Father Free’s toys, including his transmitter.

Rico ordered a tonic water with a slice of lime from Al, an ex-cryptographer. He hoped that Father Free wasn’t below on the pier working on his fishing boat. For Rico, a boat was an isolated environment, and this evening he made a serious study of isolation. But he was not the least interested in hauling his two hundred lacerations back down those stairs and working his way out to the end of a floating pier.

Tonight will have to be the night,
he thought.

“Things are heating up out there,” Rico said, toasting Al and taking a long pull at the tonic.

“That’s the world,” Al said. “We don’t do the world anymore.”

“What do you call that?” Rico asked, and nodded towards the video screen.

Al shrugged.

“Forewarned is forearmed.”

Two Ministry of Intelligence types sat in one corner, making notes on the programming. The screen at Spook’s offered an unwashed version of U.S. and international affairs, straight off the satellites. This version was as rare as it was illegal, and Spook didn’t care about legal. He knew how to siphon anything off the airwaves, how to get anything on the air, how to move anything or anyone anywhere, and he was always a step ahead of the Agency. The Ministry of the Interior left Spook alone because he let their intelligence people drink in his bar and make notes on things they couldn’t find out for themselves. It was almost a symbiosis.

Four suits that had to be Pan-Pacific Security goons tried to look invisible, two at a table in the far corner, two beside the exit. Rico toasted them in the mirror but none responded. They were contractors, probably drawing double for the holiday, so whatever they were up to was nothing personal.

“Tightasses,” Rico muttered. “No sense of humor.”

He hoped he wouldn’t have to wait long for Spook; the liquor bottles were calling him with a strong, insistent voice. He chewed the pulp out of the center of his lime, and saw the flick of a shadow behind the bar mirror. Rico smiled a broad smile and toasted the shadow.

Father Free had been Rico’s ethics instructor at the Academy, and his advice on matters of philosophy was sound. Spook’s improvisational acting course had saved Rico’s life more times than he could count. Spook was a weaponless wonder, and he would have made a helluvan agent in any intelligence service. But he was also a priest, and when his tenure was up at the Academy, he went where his superiors sent him—Costa Brava, before it was Costa Brava. Rico asked for and received Central America duty the following year.

Spook bankrolled his initiative and a handful of wide-eyed young rebels into the
cooperative
while
Colonel Toledo bankrolled ViraVax for the Agency. No wonder Father Free didn’t have much to say to Colonel Toledo, these days.

Father Free helped Costa Brava upgrade its telecommunications, and in exchange the country granted the Archbishop the only non-government broadcast license. Officials also looked the other way when Father Free started the
cooperativa
mainly because they expected it to fail. They didn’t know that the private bar was the international office of the “National Security Alumni Club.” Father Free wanted everyone to have the chance to right the wrongs they’d done through his Agency, or any other. His bar was home to countless ex-operatives from dozens of countries. There was never any trouble at Spook’s.

Some bars sold drugs or weapons under the table, but Spook sold possibilities. For the right cause, he even gave them away. He wouldn’t wage war, but Father Free often waged rescues. Other than the brief confession, it had been five years since he’d even spoken to Rico Toledo.

Rico sipped his drinkless drink and checked the suits in the mirror. They could have been mannequins. The Interior Ministry boys continued entering incriminating notes into their Sidekicks, though they must have known that no authority in Costa Brava was about to slap the hands of the man who had brought them into the twenty-first century. They wouldn’t even have those Sidekicks if it hadn’t been for Father Free.

The unwashed Washington, D.C., news did not impress Rico, no more than that slow-motion obstructionist committee had. Congressional attention was on the water wars that had the western half of the U.S. in flames, and the ghetto wars that charred their own doorsteps in the east. They were not about to listen to a beat-up bush colonel warning them of a rogue virus two thousand miles away.

Rico glimpsed himself in the mirror, and he could see why. Crisscrossed with scars and stitches, his dark face looked singularly deniable. He also saw Lieutenant Colonel Rena Scholz standing behind him.

“Scare yourself?” she asked.

“Every day,” he said. “I’m just too damned handsome for words. Have a seat. Buy you a drink?”

Rena Scholz hesitated, her expression questioning.

“Tonic and lime,” he explained. “Don’t worry, the bogeyman’s still in the bottle and I hammered the cork in tight.”

Toledo patted the seat beside him to hide his shakiness, and she sat. Father Free himself appeared with his effervescent grin and flourished a napkin onto the bar. Rico assumed he’d been watching from his special office. Father Free couldn’t resist Rena Scholz. Before nursing and the Army, she’d almost become a nun.

“You look like shit, Toledo,” Father Free said. “But that’s not unusual. What’ll you have, young lady?”

“A double shot of that flattery, Father. And a Virgin Mary while you dish it out.”

Rico studied Rena Scholz’s reflection beside his own. She was beautiful. It had taken him ten years to realize that, mainly because the aura from Rena Scholz had been barbed wire—all business, no question. The hatchwork of fresh scars on his face flushed a deeper pink when she caught his gaze.

Rena Scholz was a blue-eyed blonde who wore the effects of the Costa Brava sun like a beauty queen. Tan had gone out of fashion with the ozone layer, but Rena Scholz always turned heads with her tan, her buzzed-down crop of blonde fuzz and her ice-blue eyes.

“This place should be called ‘The Oasis,’” Scholz said. “Costa Brava’s heating up, big-time. It’s still quiet in here.”

“Heat’s what you’re after, isn’t it, Scholz?” Rico asked. “Don’t you just love adrenaline?”

Scholz had been raised by some nuns in Idaho who made the news when they’d actually done battle with the Aryan Nations back in the 90s. “Pistol-Packing Nuns Flush Huns” had been the headline, and Solaris had recruited her fresh out of nursing school as a result. Scholz fought her own demons, on her own time. She sucked on a chili from a bowl on the bar.

“Adrenaline’s the only drug that’s still free,” she said.

“The kids?” he asked her.

“Still at the farm. Still ready to jump. Chang’s out there now, too. Mostly hired guns, like your shadows, here.”

Scholz nodded towards the Pan-Pacific Security drones.

“Chang have a vaccine yet?”

“Microtubules,” Scholz said. “She might not need a vaccine.”

Rico turned on his stool for a better look at Rena Scholz.

“What the hell are microtubules?”

“Chang says they’re little subways that one AVA builds to smuggle the rest of them into and throughout the cells. She’s found a way to prevent the microtubules from forming.”

“Great!” Rico said. “Then she beat this thing!”

“Not exactly. We still can’t get authorization to get any labs involved.”

“Why the hell not?”

Rico knew why not—he’d built these frustrations into the system himself, to give the DIA time to cover their asses if anything ever went wrong.

Scholz shrugged, and helped herself to a swallow of his tonic. “Intelligence Committee’s still arguing about who should be trusted with the technique. Marte says it won’t matter anyhow.”

“What do you mean?”

“She thinks it’s self-limiting. Mishwe made a key mistake. It’s
so
fast-acting,
so
contagious that it’ll burn itself out, like those fires up there on the peel. We just have to stay out of its range until then.”

Rico barked a hoarse laugh. He nodded at the peel-and-peek beside the mirror. Raw network footage depressed him as much as whitewashed network footage. The sound was off, but split-screen showed four different airports fighting burning planes and terminals.

“Look at them. Squabbling over who gets to shower this week. The Water Wars and gang alliances are small potatoes. Maybe this bug will thin things out enough that turf wars will be obsolete.”

“We’ve had turf wars ever since the first human swung the first club,” Scholz said. “And there are a lot of ways to define ‘turf.’ “

Father Free reappeared with Scholz’s drink.

“The Pope’s dead,” he announced. “A fire in the Vatican, about an hour ago.”

The priest set a large goblet in front of Rena Scholz. Stalks of celery and pickled string beans stood in a thick tomato froth. Father Free pushed the bowl of chilies closer to Scholz, then turned to leave.

“A fire?” Rico asked after him. “What kind of fire?”

But Father Free was already gone. The man Rico knew as Spook always came and went silently, with a practiced invisibility.

“First Casey, of the Gardeners, and now the Pope, of the Catholics,” Scholz mused. “You don’t suppose that’s coincidence, do you?”

She sipped her drink and affected a nonchalance that he found . . . stimulating. This was the first time since he’d known Scholz that Rico sat with her in a bar. Outside, the faint wail of sirens backed up the
whump
of mortars working the neighboring zone.

Scholz swirled a celery stalk through her drink and sucked it dry, then began to crunch it systematically from the bottom up. Her gaze was distracted, focused somewhere on the other side of the mirror.

Father Free appeared at Rico’s left elbow.

“I heard you were smart, and dry, to boot,” he said. “Congratulations. But don’t you get it yet? The light’s always red.”

“Which light, Spook?”

“The traffic light on The Hill,” the priest said. “White House, Congress, doesn’t matter. All that comes out of there is excuses. You want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

Rico smiled. He had the perfect challenge for Spook, the perfect hook.

“What we need done can’t be done without Congress.”

“Like a surgical strike?” Father Free laughed. “You been in the bush too long, amigo.”

“Well, you’ve been out of it too long, Spook. You retire, confess your sins, start a bar for remorseful ex-agents and let the world go to hell. You were good, Spook. You could
talk a nun out of her bra and panties.”

“. . . and
did
. . .”

Scholz shook her head in disgust.

“Shit, Father . . .”

“Sorry, Scholz,” Father Free said. “It wasn’t . . . you know, a sex thing. It was a bet, that’s all. Look, I wish I could help you two, but you’re still inside. So are the four gentlemen who have waited for you all afternoon without buying so much as a coffee. You don’t deal with the outside, and I don’t deal with the inside.”

Rico checked the mirror, then looked Spook in the eye. Spook didn’t waver. Rico smiled, and winked.

If we’ve got tails in here, we’ve got wires,
he thought.
But if I know Spook, they’re probably not working.

Father Free hadn’t lost his healthy paranoia.

“You couldn’t get an item out on the newswire, could you?”

“Of course not,” Father Free said, his grin lopsided, his gaze steady. “An idea like that gets around, even a priest could get in trouble. I specialize in fishing charters. If you’re interested in fishing, we can talk business. Let me get you two more. The ice is on the house.”

Then Spook turned on his fluid invisibility, and was gone.

Rico used the mirror to scan the bar. He recognized three patrons as ex-informants from his own district, now working for CostaTel, thanks to Father Free. The four squeaky-clean types moved, two covering the door and two flanking him and Scholz. As he’d suspected, they wore the gold lapel pins of Pan-Pacific. Spook’s was the kind of bar anyone could love, but few could find from the outside. There was no sign, no official name, no logo on the napkins or matches. Rico would bet his retirement that no one had ever wandered in off the street and that these guys weren’t regulars.

“I’ve been thinking,” Major Scholz said.

“Sounds like trouble.”

“What doesn’t? Look, I think you should party without me.”

Rico sucked an ice cube, watched two squeaky-cleans whispering near the door.

“What’s your plan, Scholz?”

“You party with the kids and Chang, invite Spook to be neighborly. I’ll meet you afterward for ice cream.”

“Eat all the cake ourselves, and while the ice cream melts you sit in the dark? I don’t think so.”

The ears on the wires will have a time with this,

“There’s a poker game back at the office,” she said. “I feel good about my strategy and could use a little bonus. Finish your formalities, and we’ll meet up.”

Everybody has a goddamn plan,
he thought,
but nobody’s coordinating.

Rico sucked an ice cube, resisted the urge to scratch his stitches and shifted his weight from the more sore buttock to the less.

“I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sure this will shock you, Scholz,” he said, turning to face her, “but I’m getting selfish in my old age. There are some tough hombres in that game, and I don’t want to lose you, that’s why not.”