Greg Rucka - Critical Space

I took off my glasses. The left lens had taken a hairline scratch at some point, probably before I'd left New York. I hadn't noticed it. I put my glasses back on.

"If you stay," she said, "I will have no secrets from you."

She waited for me to respond for nearly a minute, and when it was clear to her that I wasn't going to answer, she cleared the table and went inside. I heard the faucet in the sink open, the water splashing. Miata moved from where he had parked by her chair to me, resting his muzzle on my lap. I decided that scratching him on the head would not be wholesale collaboration with the enemy.

If I believe her, I thought. If I can believe her. And I know I can't, so why am I even thinking about this?

The photographs that Gracey and Bowles had shown me, they could have been faked, it was true. Why they would fake them, why they would go to the time and the effort to put a scare into me, I couldn't begin to imagine. It had been in that same meeting that Oxford had been mentioned, that I had seen a picture that connected him to Drama. That meeting had put the players on the table, linked them all together.

There just wasn't any logic to it that I could see other than a means to set me up. So maybe the Backroom Boys were in on it with Drama; she'd already admitted to having worked for the CIA, or at least she had if I was willing, once again, to believe her. It was like following a loop of lies, a Mobius strip that, no matter where I began to follow it, fell back on itself. I couldn't even see a fundamental truth anymore, a place to start. I was being played, sure; by whom, why, I no longer had any idea.

Then there was the other thing, the chance, however remote, that she was telling me the truth. That Oxford had been hired to kill her, that the CIA had misread their intelligence, had overreacted to the presence of two of The Ten arriving in the United States at the same time. If that held, then Drama was lying about Dallas, but that could be explained.

It was, in fact, harder to do what she had done to me in New York without killing people than the other way around. If the deal in Dallas had gone sour, if she'd had to defend herself, then it made sense she would lie to me, deny having been there at all, for fear of pushing me away.

Of course, I didn't actually know if Drama was telling the truth, if my friends were still alive.

Too many variables, too many things I didn't know.

She emerged from the house, carrying a beach towel and no longer wearing the shorts, now just in the one-piece bathing suit.

"I must exercise," she said without looking at me, and headed down the path back to the beach. Miata left me and followed her.

I stayed at the table.

There was only one door that I couldn't open, in the basement. Shielded wiring ran along the basement ceiling, into the room. Throughout the house I found signs of an alarm system, though I couldn't locate the controls. Motion detectors had been discreetly placed in the foyer, the living room, and the kitchen. Another was at the head of the stairs, and on the second floor, after some looking, I found sensors at both ends of the hall, and the bedrooms. The only room that wasn't covered was the master bathroom.

I didn't find any video surveillance equipment, no cameras or the like, but I didn't take a lot of time to look, so I could have easily missed them.

There was no telephone that I could find, and no television. The only household electronic was an Aiwa compact stereo system with multidisc CD player, sitting on a shelf in the living room with a stack of discs beside it. She seemed to be a big fan of the Fab Four, had a copy of everything they'd ever released, as well as orchestral recordings of their songs, pure instrumental versions. There was a scattering of classical music.

The house was Spartan. A framed poster for the Easter Regatta hung beside an ugly oil painting of a milkmaid working a cow. The only bookcases I found were in the living room, filled with tired paperbacks, their spines creased and broken, most of them at least ten years old. There were several spy stories, and a lot of true-crime books. Most were in English or French, but there were a handful written in German.

In the kitchen, in a cupboard by the sink, she kept cookbooks. The majority of these were in French, lessons in the preparation of fine foods, and none looked to have ever been opened. The rest were in English, titles that talked of maximizing your potential through food, the power of fresh fruits, healthy vegetarian cooking, performance diets.

Aside from the knives in the kitchen, the only weapon I found was upstairs in the master bathroom, a Korth.357 Combat Magnum, resting on a box of tampons in a drawer by the sink. I'd never actually seen a Korth before. It is a six-thousand-dollar gun, handmade and superbly tooled.

If you're going to be attacked in the John, I thought, you might as well defend yourself with the best.

I dropped the Korth back on the tampon box and headed back outside.

The sun had dried most of the water from her skin and swimsuit. She sat on the towel, tossing a piece of driftwood for Miata to fetch. The Doberman seemed ecstatic with the game, running back and forth with his mouth open and his tongue flapping, and if he'd had his voice, I'm sure he'd have been barking in delight.

"I want to use a phone," I said.

She didn't look at me. "I can't allow that."

"I have to know if my friends are still alive."

"If you call them, you will tell them where you are. They will come for you. They will alert the authorities. I can't permit that." She held out her hands as Miata returned with the stick, and they played a short game of tug-of-war before he dropped it and crouched, ready to resume the chase again. She hurled the stick end over end a good twenty feet, and he was after it almost before it had left her hand.

"I won't tell them," I said.

She'd been sitting with her hands on her knees, her legs drawn up, and now she stood on the towel. With her index fingers, she pulled the elastic at the seat of the suit, making the fabric taut again. She had a swimmer's body, with a powerful torso and defined muscles in her shoulders and arms.

When Miata had returned and then left again in pursuit of the same stick, she said, "You will do the job?"

"I can't answer that until I talk to my friends."

"I will pay you three million dollars, and provide you with any equipment you require. I will transfer the money to the accounts you specify, or show you how to establish a new one, one that will keep the money safe and hidden."

"I haven't said I'll do it. I need to use a phone first."

She picked up the towel and shook it out. Miata came back and dropped the stick at her feet, and she said something to the dog in Russian, and the dog, for a moment, looked annoyed.

"Follow," she commanded.

I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or to the Doberman.

The keypad to unlock the basement door was hidden behind the light switch, and the code was long and she blocked my view of the sequence with her body.

The room was enormous, though mostly empty, a concrete bunker with a low ceiling. A couple of mats were spread out on the floor in the middle of the space; heavy, sway, and speed bags hung just past them. A weight bench was in the corner, a stack of plates beside it. A single column stood in the center of the mats, wrapped in gray and black foam and held in place with duct tape. At the far end of the room was a man-shaped silhouette, plywood painted black, and farther along more mats, these positioned in front of a series of floor-length mirrors. A dance barre was bolted to the wall nearby. On the left-hand wall as I entered, about halfway down, was an alcove, and another door, closed. The scent of cordite lingered, stale in the air.