Resistance (30 page)

His body felt as though it had processed most of the chemicals he’d put into it and his head was now clear, but he still wasn’t sure what Boylan was on about. What he did know, however, was that the funny little lawyer who reminded him of Larry from the Three Stooges was the one person who had been working for him from the get-go.

‘And what if I say no?’ he asked Trinder. ‘You gonna audit me? Go after my family?’

Trinder shook his head.

‘If you’re not interested, sir, I’m sure you’ll find Ms Hilton is still wandering around outside. I fear it will take her some time to negotiate a passage to the elevator and untangle the Gordian Knot of the up and down buttons. I will make my apologies for wasting your time, and say my goodbyes.’

‘And I will get to work on your tax matter, Dave,’ said Boylan. ‘But I would much prefer not to. I have some other, very exciting –’

Dave waved the lawyer quiet with one hand. ‘S’okay.’

He signed the papers. It took a while. There were four or five different documents and many copies of each.

‘Excellent,’ said Boylan when he was done. ‘And with that, gentlemen, I will leave you to your business, for which Agent Trinder insists I am not cleared, and frankly, I do not care. I must be about
your
business, Dave. The infinitely more lucrative and interesting business than anything Agent Trinder might have for you. For us, because we are in this together. I shall join you in New York, when I have finalised the merchandising arrangements for the film and settled on a publisher and developer for your video game. Be aware that you have signed non-disclosure agreements, but these relate to specific aspects of our arrangement with Mr Trinder’s agency, and will in no way affect your ability to do promotional and publicity work. I added that clause too. Good luck, Dave. And we shall meet again in the city that never sleeps. Two days hence. Agent Trinder, a pleasure, of sorts. I shall forward copies of the contracts to your office, unless you would prefer some sort of dead-drop arrangement, or a tricky exchange of similar-looking briefcases in a public park?’

Trinder indicated an emailed PDF would be fine.

Boylan excused himself, probably to return to his room and crawl into bed with more contracts.

‘So, this is awkward,’ said Dave, as the door closed behind the lawyer. ‘I work for you now?’

‘Only in the loosest sense, Mr Hooper. You work for the American people.’

‘Awesome. They’re a soft touch. So, this Karen chick?’

‘Colonel Ekaterina Varatchevsky,’ said Trinder. ‘Of the Russian GRU. Also known as Karin.’

‘The GR-what?’

‘A spy, Mr Hooper. Karin Varatchevsky is a spy.’

‘Fuck, really! You want me to go catch a spy?’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘That’s cool, I guess, but couldn’t you just do that yourself?’

‘Yes and no,’ said Trinder. ‘Colonel Varatchevsky is special, Mr Hooper. She was special when she was just Karen Warat, her jacket, or cover identity. She was the best field manager
and
operator the Russians had in this country. We only became aware of her as we broke open another Russian spy ring, run by the FSB. Putin’s CIA, if you like. They weren’t nearly as professional as Colonel Varatchevsky’s military intelligence network and some rather fortuitous intelligence leakage led us to Warat. It wasn’t GRU incompetence which exposed her. It was her FSB colleagues’ incompetence. And her bad luck,’ he added.

Dave was interested now, not because it affected him, but because it was an interesting story. Russian spies in New York? Who knew that was still a thing?

‘So what? You grabbed her up? You’re tailing her? I’m sort of wondering where I come in?’

‘You come in because Karen Warat is not only special in all the ways I just explained, Mr Hooper. She’s special like you.’

Dave didn’t understand at first. He picked up another little burger and ate it in two bites before speaking again.

‘Like me? How? There nothing special about
. . .’

He stopped.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Agent Trinder. ‘You killed your monster, and she killed hers, right in the middle of the FBI raid that was supposed to take her down.’

‘How?’ asked Dave. He considered his own slaying of Urgon to have been pure dumbass luck.

‘Pure dumb luck,’ said Trinder. ‘The thing emerged from a sewer grate and rampaged through the warehouse where Karen Warat, in character, was hosting an art exhibit.’

‘A what?’

‘Her cover, sir.’

‘Okay,’ said Dave. ‘I understand.’ But he didn’t. ‘What then?’

‘The beast killed a number of her guests and was targeted by FBI and Clearance officers on site. They shot it to pieces, but Ms Warat finished the job. She cut its head off.’

‘Whoa! With what?’

‘A 400-year-old Japanese katana. A samurai sword, Mr Hooper. That was the subject of her gallery exhibit. Military arcana of the ancient world.’

‘Wow. Cool art.’

Dave was starting to get it now, even though it didn’t make much sense. He felt twitchy and had to get up out of his big, soft cube chair and walk over to the windows. Looking out at the view let him feel less trapped.

‘So, Karen what’s-her-name kills this thing, and she turns into
. . .’

‘You, Mr Hooper. She’s just like you.’

His heart was beating hard now. He breathed in and out to try to slow it down.

‘Fuck,’ he said softly.

Now he understood.

26

‘I should be getting miles,’ said Dave.

The jet was smaller and less luxurious than the last two rides, but it still got him across the continent in half a day.

‘To get the miles you have to fly the miles,’ said Trinder. ‘And I’m sure you’d prefer to avoid coach.’

‘You fly coach?’

‘I am a humble civil servant, sir.’

‘Bullshit.’

He still didn’t like Trinder, and he surely didn’t trust him, but he was finding him a lot easier to deal with than Heath. He was a helluva lot less judgmental for one thing. He didn’t care about Dave flirting with the hostess. Didn’t nag him about his nutrition choices. Didn’t make him feel bad about any of his choices in fact.

Trinder insisted he fuel up and rest before they descended toward a secured strip at some military base about fifty or sixty miles north of Manhattan, but he didn’t much care how Dave saw to that.

‘I just want your tank topped up. Plenty of calories in bourbon,’ he said, patting his own stomach where it rolled over his belt. ‘If that works, good luck to you, sir. I am envious.’

Dave ate steadily: a couple of steaks, some baked potatoes with sour cream, couple of bowls of mac and cheese, but real gourmet shit, none of that Kraft crap for Super Dave, all washed down with three or four beers. He napped, and landed at the Air National Guard base feeling like he could flip cars.

Two dark-suited agents waited for them next to a black SUV, parked on the tarmac. He recognised them from Vegas. Comeau and the woman. She greeted Trinder and Dave in turn, holding a door open for them.

‘Good afternoon, sir. Mr Hooper.’

Oh, yeah, he still had it.

And that was the last they heard from either agent, who both climbed in up front and drove them out of the base and into civilian traffic. The trip into Manhattan took an hour and a half, with the agents occasionally using a siren and flashers to manoeuvre through traffic that wasn’t moving quickly enough for them. Trinder used the time to go over the briefing he’d given Dave in the plane. Pictures of Karen Warat – quite the blonde Russian babe-bushka. Plans and pictures of the Russian consulate where she was almost certainly holed up.

‘She should have gone to a safe house, but I guess she was a little freaked out.’

Dave recalled his own encounter with Urgon on the Longreach.

‘A little, you reckon? Did she pass out after killing it?’

‘No,’ said Trinder. ‘Not even for a moment. But the
. . .
transformation was immediate. The agents on site described an opponent with unusual strength and speed. She put three of them down. Wiped off a jolt from a taser, just plucked out the prongs. And the
. . .
ah
. . .
the weapon she used to kill the demon?’

‘Yes?’ Dave asked, wondering where this was headed.

‘It was a sword. She dropped it after taking the head off. One of our men tried to pick it up.’

‘And he couldn’t?’

‘Oh no, he could. But his arm fell off. As though cut through.’

Dave looked at him without speaking for a few seconds.

‘You didn’t mention that before I signed on.’

‘I’ve mentioned it now. Perhaps it won’t affect you?’

‘Perhaps?’

‘She retrieved the sword. We don’t need you to pick it up.’

Trinder showed him a pair of open palms, to prove he wasn’t hiding anymore. ‘We’re in uncharted waters, Mr Hooper. You probably understand more about this woman and what she can do than we do.’

It was Trinder’s turn to stare at him, waiting for an answer. But Dave found he didn’t have one.

‘Nope,’ he said, after consulting Urgon. ‘I got nothing.’

They were coming up on a bridge that would carry them across to the island.

‘So this chick, she was like you guys, a trained killer, right?’

‘Even more so. I am not a field operator, Mr Hooper.’

Trinder pursed his lips as if pondering something that had only just occurred to him.

‘She would have had advanced combat training, judo, jujitsu,
krav maga
and the like. But she was also
. . .’
he frowned. ‘She was not an amateur with a sword, Mr Hooper?’

Dave had been looking out of the window at the skyline of Manhattan. ‘What?’ he asked, turning his attention back to Trinder.

‘Our work up on Colonel Varatchevsky indicates she was recruited to the GRU from an old Soviet-era Olympic program. One that survived into the Putin administration and –’

Dave cut him off. ‘I don’t need the whole history lesson. Just get to the bit I’m not gonna like.’

‘She was an Olympic fencer. Or a trainee at least. Talent-spotted at an early age and taken up into the training cohort for the games in Sydney. But she didn’t make it. Her parents died and she disappeared from the program and from public view until we found her living under the name Warat in New York. She was a sleeper. Do you know what that means?’

‘I watch TV,’ Dave said, losing patience. ‘And I don’t care about that. What I do care about is going up against some woman who could’ve kicked my ass
before
she got bumped up to superhero status,
with
a magical sword,
that
she knows how to use.’

He found himself tightening his grip on Lucille, but she was strangely silent, seeming not to care about whatever fight he was speeding toward.

And they were speeding now. The mid-afternoon traffic was surprisingly light, but he already knew why. As soon as they’d left the airbase they’d passed long lines of cars queued up for gasoline.

‘They rationing anything but gas here?’ he asked, partly to avoid thinking about what Trinder was expecting of him and whether there might be any more surprises on the way to doing it.

‘Not quite the same when you’re not partying with the A-List, is it?’ said Trinder with a nasty smirk.

‘Fuck off.’

‘For what it’s worth, yes. The governor and the state house agreed on a package of emergency measures when it became obvious the transport system was going to seize up. Food rationing mostly. They haven’t had to manage the power grid yet and we’re confident we can contain the threat to the interstate
. . .’

‘Whatever,’ said Dave, who realised he’d had very little contact with the real world since this whole thing started. He wondered if Annie and the boys were okay and dismissed the thought almost as soon as he had it. Her old man had a root cellar full of preserves and emergency supplies. That was his way. He also realised he hadn’t really thought of them much since New Orleans and wondered if Trinder would object to him calling his sons at least. But then Boylan wouldn’t want him talking to Annie, so maybe he was better off just leaving it.

Dave let his gaze drift out the windows again. He didn’t know New York as well as the oil towns he’d worked out of since graduating. Houston. Galveston. Even Riyadh. It was hard to tell, as they rolled down some riverside expressway, how the city was dealing with the emergency. Everything was open. There were long lines here and there. But that could have been for theatre or Yankees tickets he supposed. As Comeau, the driver, took them into the city proper he saw newspaper displays crying out the news of the day and the week. ‘Monsters Crushed in Nebraska.’ ‘The Second Battle of Britain.’ ‘Take That, Mordor!’

He even thought he caught sight of a picture of himself sitting across from Jen Aniston in LA on some trash mag poster outside a Duane Reade drugstore. ‘Jen’s New Superman?’ But the Suburban flashed past too quickly for him to be sure. It seemed way too soon after meeting her for anything to have made it into print.

Trinder said they were getting close when the northern end of Central Park appeared ahead through the traffic.

‘We have an observation post in the same street as the Russians,’ he explained. ‘We’ll head there now and you can prepare for the extraction.’

‘So you want me to bring her out?’ Dave asked.

‘If at all possible,’ said Trinder. ‘If not, you are authorised to use deadly force.’

‘Me? Against her?’ Dave scoffed.

Trinder sighed.

‘Mr Hooper. The beast you put down was at least two and a half times as large as the one Colonel Varatchevsky killed. And she was just mopping up. She evaded the FBI in the chaos of the moment, but she was obviously disoriented otherwise she would not have fled to her handlers at the consulate mere days after going dark. She is not that poor an agent. I have seen you operate, sir. At minimal power. I am confident you can take her. Just as confident as I am that nobody else can. You do what you did in Las Vegas, Mr Hooper. You speed in and out and nobody will be any the wiser. Take your lady friend with you, by all means, if that helps.’ He nodded to where the hardwood shaft of the splitting maul stuck up between Dave’s knees. ‘And if the worst comes to the worst and you have to kill the Russian, you do it. You have been authorised to do so at the highest levels. We cannot have this woman loose on American soil.’

‘Then let her go home,’ said Dave, who wasn’t at all sure he wanted to tangle with this bitch. Was there even a chance Trinder was hoping they’d cancel each other out?

‘That is not an option,’ Trinder replied in a voice that allowed no contradiction. ‘She was going to be captured before all this happened. She will be captured or killed now. But if you are able to effect the capture, sir, the chances of a lot of other people being killed in the process, Russians and Americans and all of these innocent bystanders
. . .’
He waved out of the window at crowds on Fifth Avenue. ‘I guarantee you the chances of them being killed will be immeasurably reduced.’

For a second Dave wondered what Heath would say under these circumstances. But he already knew. Heath would never have put him in this position.

He rubbed one calloused thumb over the butt of Lucille’s handle. Nothing there. If she cared a jot for what he was supposed to do, she was keeping quiet about it.

The SUV mounted a driveway and descended into an underground lot. The bright afternoon light disappeared as if turned off at a switch. The door rumbled down behind them and the SUV came to a stop next to a late-model sedan. The agents who’d driven them hopped out quickly and opened the doors for Trinder and Dave. He stretched the kinks out of his back as he hopped out. Another agent, a conservatively dressed man, appeared and passed a folder of documents to Trinder.

‘No change, sir.’

Trinder nodded and started walking toward an old elevator, leaving Dave to follow him.

Dave Hooper fetched Lucille and hastened after them. They rode the elevator up three floors and emerged into a simple hallway. Polished parquetry floors. Closed doors, frosted glass, everything secured by swipe-card readers. Feeling surplus to requirements, Dave waited to gain admittance. He was disappointed to discover the office on the far side of the locked door was just an office. It could have been processing insurance claims or managing exploration certificates for Baron’s.

‘This way,’ said Trinder, leading him between the desks and into a conference room. Floor plans of the consulate lay unfolded on the table. Photographs of what Dave assumed were the building’s interior hung from pin boards around the walls. Trinder motioned for him to sit in front of a wide-screen TV. He turned it on with a remote.

‘We’ve used architects’ software to render a faithful recreation of the internals of the building,’ Trinder explained. ‘You have three hours before they finish business for the day. Best familiarise yourself with the layout. We surmise Colonel Varatchevsky will be somewhere on the top floor. The windows up there are covered over and much stronger active electronic countermeasures are employed against our surveillance. And yes, in case you were wondering and before you ask, they do know we’re here and they do know we have them under constant observation. It’s just the game.’

Dave took up what looked like an Xbox controller – no, it was an Xbox controller – and pushed the stick forward. His point of view on-screen moved through the foyer of the Russian building.

‘But grabbing one of their agents right out from under them, that’s not part of the game is it.’

It was a statement, not a question.

‘No, sir, it is not. And we would not attempt such a thing if it weren’t a matter of paramount importance.’

‘And if I wasn’t here.’

‘That goes without saying.’

Trinder pulled up a chair next to Dave.

‘Look. I understand this is a lot to take in. But you’ve coped with a lot more the last week. And what we need you to do here, it’s directly connected to what happened on your rig, in New Orleans and at Omaha. If it weren’t for the Horde, Colonel Varatchevsky would now be in custody, charged with espionage. Maybe with treason.’

‘Treason? She’s Russian.’

He shrugged.

‘She has American citizenship. I told you. She was a sleeper. But she has run back to the Rodina now, and no matter what happens with the creatures who created her, she cannot be allowed to escape this country. Not given what she has become. Somebody with her training, her experience, and now these
. . .
abilities. It is not feasible to allow her back into the wild. She was always a weapon, Hooper. Now she is an infinitely more dangerous one. She cannot be allowed to escape. Do you understand this? Think of what you can do now. Think of that power in the hands of a hostile government, and make no mistake, Putin’s Russia is intractably hostile to this country.’

‘You sound like Bush,’ said Dave. ‘When he talked my brother into getting killed.’

Trinder examined him carefully. Nodding.

‘I probably do, sir. Your brother was killed in Iraq, was he not?’

Dave bristled. ‘He was.’

‘This woman,’ said Trinder. ‘She’s dangerous. But in a different way. Not just because of what she’s become, but because of what she was before.’

‘
Dar ienamic,
’ said Dave in the Olde Tongue.

‘Say what?’

‘Don’t worry.’ He settled himself in front of the screen. ‘Don’t worry, Trinder. I’ll go get your lady spy for you. Hell, I might be able to charm her into giving it up. I do that now.’