Agency Page 7

  Drone I left with him is on top of the van. Other one’s back under your lapel.

  She looked down, but with the suit on couldn’t see her lapels. The door slid open. She saw the rear of a tall white truck, one of its twin doors open. She stepped out, heading for it, Virgil to her right. Farther to her right, ahead, three men in vests and helmets were peering into a brightly lit opening in the white wall, within it what she first took to be the enlargement of a congested urban satellite view, then recognized as cable, conduit, components.

  There was a red plastic box on the floor, below the truck’s open rear door. She stepped up on it, feeling elephantine in the white bootees, and closed the door behind her.

  Darkness, instantly replaced by a weird green half-light.

  “I’m processing us a shitty excuse for night vision,” Eunice said. “Sit on that pallet,” the cursor indicating where, “on the folded tarp.”

  “Kid who had the money’s Latino? I couldn’t tell.”

  “Moldovan. Goes on the street by Mig, for Miguel. His Spanish is so good they think he’s Colombian. Joke is, it’s”—MiG—“an illegal, pretending to be a less exotic flavor of illegal. Get on the pallet. Virgil’s ready to go.”

  She heard the driver-side door thump shut, up beyond the windowless bulkhead, then the ignition. She stepped onto the wooden pallet and squatted, propping herself up, gloved hands behind her.

  “This won’t shift around,” Eunice said, the cursor indicating strapped sheets of marble, sloping up and out on either side.

  Virgil reversed, turning, then started up the ramp. Stopped. Sound of the white gate opening. Then up again, to Fremont.

  “Check this,” Eunice said, opening a feed straight up, evidently from the microdrone on the roof.

  Verity, remembering the view from the top of the park, Eunice tagging drones above the Financial District, thought she saw one now, above them. “Drone?”

  “National Enquirer,” Eunice said. “Here’s their feed.”

  A white rectangle, in SoMa traffic. The top of this truck, Verity guessed. “Nobody’s thought you might be you yet, but one of the hardhats flagged you as possible scandal material, going in. And they know Caitlin’s been in New York.”

  “Hate ’em,” Verity said. Eunice replaced the Enquirer’s feed of the truck’s roof with their drone again, barely visible against cloud. Then the feed closed, leaving her in blurry green undarkness. “That guy, the Moldovan . . .”

  “Sevrin,” Eunice said.

  “You got him working for you between my turning you on, yesterday afternoon, and us going up in the park?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s that even possible?”

  “Analyzed a shitload of darknet chat, about shifting amounts of cash in the Bay Area. Boy stood out. I got in touch, struck a deal, put him on retainer.”

  “For part of the money?”

  “That was just what we needed for one cash-only transaction. By the time I was in touch with him, I’d figured how to access serious money.”

  “He’s a criminal?”

  “Financial services,” Eunice said, “but on the street side.”

  The truck stopped and reversed, turning. Virgil killed the engine. She heard men’s voices. Spanish.

  “Get up,” Eunice said.

  Verity did, clumsy in the silicosis suit. She heard Virgil open the driver-side door, then he was at the back, opening that, just as Eunice showed her a feed of three men in tan jumpsuits, from above, clustered around the van’s left front fender. A fourth brought a flat gray rectangle, lay down on it, then scooted under the front chassis.

  “How are you?” Virgil asked.

  “Okay.” She saw upright red toolboxes with drawers, behind him. Swung herself down.

  He loosened the drawstring at the edge of the suit’s hood, drew the hood back. “Hold your breath,” he said, then unfastened the mask’s straps and removed it. “Okay to breathe.” She did, finding the odor of petroleum distillates surprisingly welcome. He unzipped the front of the suit, stepped behind her, and held the fabric at the shoulders, allowing her to shrug her way out. “I’m standing on the edges of the bootees,” he said. “Step forward and your shoes will come out.” She did.

  “So. The Singapore deal fell through,” he said, behind her.

  “Eunice’s advice.”

  “Know why?”

  “She had documents. All I know.”

  The beige Fiat she’d seen on Valencia gleamed in the other bay, looking like it had just been washed and polished.

  Virgil stepped from behind her, the suit draped over his left arm, mask in his right hand. “Good seeing you again.”

  “You too, Virgil.”

  “Take care of yourself.” He turned and walked toward the sunlight, the voices speaking Spanish.

  Eunice’s Moldovan, Modigliani-thin, stepped from behind the Fiat. He did have the goatee, she saw, but it was so short as to barely be there. “Sevrin.”

  “Verity,” he said. He opened the front passenger door for her, she got in, he closed it. “Head on knees, because they always have cameras. I fasten seatbelt behind you, silence alarm.”

  She did, hearing the buckle click behind her.

  18

  PANDAFORM, TRIPARTITE

  Netherton, seated on the floor, watched Thomas gurgle at the nanny. Pandaform now, tripartite, each of its three resulting units was identically adorable. Prior to having Thomas, he supposed, he’d have found this gently bumbling trio no more agreeable than Ash’s tardibot, but now it delighted Thomas, and for that he thought the better of it.

  “A lovely boy, Wilf,” Lowbeer said, from the kitchen table, where Rainey was pouring tea. “Has your mother’s eyes.”

  Lowbeer having never met his mother, Netherton assumed she’d checked whatever Akashic record for eye color. It hadn’t occurred to him that Thomas’s eyes were particularly like his mother’s. “He has his own eyes,” he said, and rolled a plaid felt ball in his son’s direction. One third of the nanny lunged for it, toppling rotundly over in the process.

  Neither would it have occurred to him to have Lowbeer up for tea. The invitation had been Rainey’s idea, her friend, at the last minute, having canceled their afternoon at the Tate.

  “Wilf tells me,” Rainey said, putting down the teapot and taking the seat opposite Lowbeer, “that America, in your new stub, elected a woman president. Before Gonzalez. But that they aren’t necessarily that much happier than people were here, with the opposite outcome.”

  “They don’t wake each day with renewed gratitude for that particular bullet having been dodged, no,” said Lowbeer, “but that’s simply human nature. Meanwhile, in a world still subject to the other key stressors in our shared history, and with a complexly leveraged international crisis, one potentially involving nuclear weapons . . .”

  “Wilf,” Rainey said, sharply, “you haven’t mentioned that.”

  “Only learned of it last night,” he said. “Didn’t want to tell you, last thing before bed.”

  “What crisis?” she asked Lowbeer.

  “One involving Turkey,” Lowbeer said, “Syria, Russia, the United States, and NATO. The new president finds herself in a position arguably worse than the one that confronted Kennedy in Cuba, in 1962. She has quite a solid grasp of brinkmanship, in my view, but the aunties’ best projections are quite grim.” Lowbeer stirred her tea. “You’re in crisis management yourself, Rainey.” She sipped. “As well as making an excellent pot.”

  “Harrods Afternoon,” Rainey said.

  “I’ve just sent you a précis of the crisis,” Lowbeer said. “Your sense of things would be most welcome, should you care to read it.”

  “Thank you,” said Rainey.

  Thomas began to cry then, rather halfheartedly, so Netherton moved to pick him up. The pandaforms, in rolling
out of his way, became more spherical than he imagined any actual panda could.

  19

  IMAGES OF THE AFTERMATH

  When she guessed they’d gone two blocks, Verity sat up, bumping into a perfumed car tag she’d been smelling. At least he wasn’t wearing it. “What flavor’s this?” she asked.

  “Champagne,” he said, “and bergamot.”

  She didn’t feel like celebrating. Then they were under the bridge, always a weird feeling. As they emerged, he touched the dashboard media package. “—grievous act of terrorism,” the president said. “An entire busload of Turkish cadets, thirty in all, killed in an attack employing synchronized IEDs. We’ve all seen the images of the aftermath.” Verity herself, with considerable effort, had so far managed not to. “In retaliation, Turkey’s army shelled Kurdish locations along the border.”

  “You called for an immediate ceasefire,” someone said, female, younger, British.

  “Our intelligence community hasn’t determined responsibility,” the president said. “But when the YPG retaliated in turn, for civilian deaths in Qamishli, the response was an arguably disproportionate Turkish rocket attack, and we were well on our way to where we are today.” Sevrin touched the dash again, turning the radio off. “Old,” he said, disappointed, “last week.”

  What the actual fucking fuck? Those were T-122 Sakaryas. Turkish MRLS. You know about this?

  Verity nodded slightly, knowing Eunice would see the movement in the feed from the glasses.

  And the Russians? Got their plane shot down and they’re threatening to use nukes? And we’re doing whatever the fuck it is we’re doing, you and me and whoever the hell else, in the middle?

  “You’d kind of taken my mind off it,” Verity said, forgetting Sevrin. “Sorry,” she said to him, “phone.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  The fucking world could end, right now.

  “That’s what everybody’s saying.”

  I’m not everybody. I just found out I know mega-shitloads about the region. Some kind of serious area of specialization.

  “That’s as sweary as I’ve heard an AI be,” Verity said, her gaze then meeting Sevrin’s in a mutual side-eye.

  And with good fucking reason.

  A feed opened, on Joe-Eddy’s living room. Someone at the workbench, not Joe-Eddy, his back to the camera, was surveying the hobby rubble.

  20

  BAKER-MILLER PINK

  Good to see you, Wilf,” Janice said, from her black mesh workstation chair, his phone’s feed provided by her device’s camera. She couldn’t see him, though he could show her what he was seeing, should he want to. “Rainey and the kid doing well?”

  He’d forgotten about her having painted their living room Baker-Miller pink, an institutional shade once thought to reduce aggression in prisoners. Homeland Security had given the county drunk tank three more gallons than necessary, so she’d bartered a box of her preserves for them, at a community event. DHS had originally provided the shade because the drunk tank often housed particularly disoriented individuals, the county’s primary industry having until recently been the illicit manufacture of synthetic psychoactives. In spite of the claims made for it, Netherton himself had found it an unsettling hue, and did now. “Quite well, thanks. And you and Madison?”

  “We’re good. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve a favor to ask,” he said, “though I assume it would actually be from Madison.”

  “Yes?”

  “I remember him doing document searches for a site he was involved with, for fans of the game Sukhoi Flankers.” He’d looked up the name before calling. “I’ve something I’d like him to search for me, though it isn’t aeronautical. Is he still active, on that site?”

  “Wish he wasn’t,” Janice said. “Massive time sink. Has Ainsley signed off on this? Otherwise, I’ll need to clear it with Flynne.”

  “She’s specifically requested I look into it.”

  “What is it you’re looking for?”

  “Here’s a text file. These are possibly relevant terms. American.”

  He watched as she read them. “Next Generation Project?”

  “Projection,” he corrected.

  “Got a contextual ballpark?”

  “Artificial intelligence, counterinsurgency software, United States military, twenty-teens, highly classified.”

  “Why not just ask her younger self, here? Knowing about classified American projects was his bread and butter, before you folks came knocking.”

  “She has, but without result. That, I hope, may be because he searched government archives. Having seen what Madison turned up on those Russian jets, in the way of enthusiast-based but extremely high-quality product . . .”

  Janice narrowed her eyes at her screen. “Navy?”

  “I don’t know,” Netherton said. “I’ve no idea what any of that actually means.”

  “I’ll get him on it,” she said. “Meantime, though, you should come visit. That half-assed peri of you they had built gave me the uncanny valleys, no offense, but I miss you getting underfoot in the Wheelie. So does Flynne, I imagine. Come see us. Got our own Wheelie, now I think of it. Our nephew’s kid uses it to visit, from Clanton.”

  “You don’t quite have the technology,” he said, “to really build a peripheral. A Wheelie would be fine. What’s it been like, here?”

  “Having Leon in the White House seriously pushes a lot of different envelopes. Job keeps him mostly in Washington, but down here we get Secret Service, plus your pro-Leon media, your anti-Leon media, your lobbyists, then your Leon impersonators, who’re a breed unto themselves, thank you.”

  “How’s Flynne feeling, about her cousin’s presidency?”

  “Gave her the uncanny valleys, at first. She concentrates on Tommy and the kid now, much as things’ll let her. But she’s grateful she dodged the job herself. Felicia wanted her to run.” Felicia Gonzalez, president of the United States when this stub had been initiated, had been saved from an assassination plot by Lowbeer’s intervention. “I think Flynne might’ve given in, too, but then she realized Felicia assumed you guys would hack Badger and the voting machines, same old same old, so she put her foot down. But you know that, right?”

  Badger, Netherton remembered, was the lone atavistic survivor, in this stub, of what had been called social media. “Only in broad outline.”

  “She was ready to just take Tommy and the kid and drive off, if the election was going to be rigged. But then our Ainsley here, I mean her younger self in Washington, he suggested Leon. Promised Flynne they’d run as straight an election as possible. Sell Leon as this benign character, just sort of incidentally white and rural. Worked, too. Polling said lots of men would’ve hung back from electing another woman.” She frowned.

  He made a note to mention this to Rainey. It might assuage her feeling that everything in the county was a conspiracy. Or perhaps not.

  “How he sold Flynne on it,” Janice continued, “was to point out there’s lots of people happier with a dumbfuck in the White House. So there was Leon, not ambitious at all but enjoys some attention, sly in his own way, and he’d have Ainsley coaching him. And in real life he’s not even that much of a dickhead. The people who were the most trouble, under Gonzalez, aren’t unhappy enough, now, to be much trouble at all.” She shrugged. “Life in the county, life in these United States.” She reached off-camera for a Hefty Mart tumbler, sucked something orange through a fat compostable straw, and swallowed. “But let me get Madison on this, see what he can nerd up for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Netherton.

  21

  BAD QUALITY CONTROL IN SHENZHEN

  As Verity opened 3.7’s door, the same barista, face jingling, pushed a drink toward her. His back was turned before she’d picked it up. As she did, she glanced around the café.

  The sole
other female customer was young, Latina, intent on her phone.

  “That’s her,” Eunice said.

  “Hasn’t noticed me.”

  “She’s not cut out for this,” Eunice said, “game physics designer.”

  Verity, spotting a vacant table, carried her drink to it. As the girl glanced up, seeing her, Verity saw her thumbs became differently busy on her phone.

  “Gavin knows you’re here,” said Eunice, as Verity sat down.

  Gavin, Eunice had explained in the car, now had five bugs in Joe-Eddy’s apartment. Two in the living room, one in the kitchen, one each in bedroom and bathroom. Wireless, they looked like slightly rusty Robertson-head screws, the kind with a square hole instead of a slot or cross. The hole sheltered a pinhole video camera, the actual unit being not a screw but an inch-long cylinder, its diameter slightly smaller than that of the apparent head. Decent professional quality, according to Eunice, the profession remaining unspecified. The batteries required changing, but infrequently, and the men who’d put them there now had their own keys to the apartment.

  “They’ll be able to record us?”

  “They think they will, but what they’ll be getting is scripted bullshit I’m having a postproduction house assemble. With my input, of course, multitasking.”

  “Postproduction house?”

  “Expensive, but I’m paying for it with their money. Not that they know it yet.”

  Verity thought to check her cup, finding VERITASS in pink paint pen. She glanced at the barista, whose back was still turned.

  “I had zero idea she was even president, till Sevrin turned on the radio,” Eunice said. “Not that I thought it was anybody else.”