James Swallow - Icarus Effect

"Like knows like, is that it?" Hardesty came closer.

"I guess." He shrugged and handed back the data slate, glaring at the other man. "Let's just say I can tell the difference between someone who is a professional, and someone who pretends to be."

For a long second, Hardesty balanced on the edge of the veiled insult; then he gave a humorless smirk. "Useful. You gotta teach me that sometime, limey."

Namir blanked the holograph map with a wave of his hand. "Get your gear together and stand by. We need to be ready to deploy at a moment's notice."

U.S. Secret Service Headquarters-Washington, D.C.-United States of America

In the basement of the agency offices there was a holding area with cells and a processing office. It didn't see much use on a day-to-day basis and it was a lot cleaner and well appointed than its NYPD equivalent, but the function was the same. A cell was a cell was a cell.

They took all her gear, including the flash drive, the doctored badge, and her car key; Agents Drake and Tyler were dogged but they were smart, and she guessed that sooner or later one of them would head outside to the parking lot to go looking for her vehicle. Anna found herself hoping that D-Bar had been quick enough to hot-wire her nondescript Navig sedan and get the hell out of there when he'd heard the scuffle over the headset; she'd left the line open all the way.

They took her watch, so she had no way to reckon the passing of time. Maybe under normal circumstances she might have sat there on the plastic mattress and fretted about what was going to happen; but the crash was on her and she surrendered to it. Anna let herself go and fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

When Tyler woke her, it was like dragging herself up from the bottom of the ocean, as if her conscious mind were wrapped up in anchor chains that kept trying to pull her back to the dark and to sleep. Shrugging it off, she rose and followed him, grim-faced, down a corridor to an interview room. This, too, mirrored the one she'd been in at the 10th Precinct.

Inside: a plain table and a few chairs, the console of an audio and video recording system built into the wall, and Ron Temple. His arms were folded in front of him, and his face had an expression on it she'd never seen before. It wasn't fear or anger, but some strange merging of the two.

Anna couldn't help herself. The moment she saw him, she went for him. "You fucking bastard-!"

Tyler was right there to stop her, and he caught her in an armlock, twisting the limb back until Kelso grunted in pain. "Calm down, Anna."

"Go screw yourself, Craig!" she retorted.

"Sir?" Tyler gave Temple a questioning look, and his superior nodded toward the other chair. In quick order, the agent pushed her into the seat. Anna's cuffs slammed into the tabletop and were held there by an invisible electromagnetic inductor coil.

"I'll take it from here," said Temple. "Wait outside."

Tyler gave her a last look and then did as he was told.

Before Temple could speak again, she snarled at him. "I know what you did, you goddamn rat! You sold out your own people! You got Matt killed-"

Temple reached across the table and silenced her with a hard slap across the face. "Shut up," he said tightly. "You stupid, stupid bitch. I warned you! Didn't I warn you to stay away from all this? But you couldn't just let it go, could you? You dosed yourself up and came right back."

Her head rang with the impact and pain flared on her cheek. "I know you're part of it. The Tyrants. All of it."

"That name doesn't mean anything to me," he replied, too quick, too practiced. "You don't understand anything."

"I understand you abused your position!" she spat, pulling at the cuffs. "I understand that you took money to give up confidential information, information that got people hurt or killed!" She drew a sharp breath. "They were your colleagues. Matt and all the others…"

When she looked up, she saw fear in his eyes. Temple was shaking his head. "You don't know. They have people everywhere. It's not like there was a choice, Kelso! It was my life, the life of my family, my kids!" Anna recalled he had an ex-wife and three children living in Toronto. "This is the way things work!" he spat, the anger returning again. "You're too na'ive to see it, and now you're going to pay for that. Because I am damn well not going to take the fall!"

"Who are they?" Anna demanded. "The government? Corporates?"

He gave a harsh laugh. "Too small. It's more than just flags or dollars! These people are so big you don't even see them!" He was trembling, and he seemed to realize it. After a moment, Temple took control of himself. When he spoke again he was formal and guarded. "You've destroyed yourself, Anna. The drugs, collusion with terrorists, breaking in here and stealing classified data…" He produced the flash drive from his pocket and showed it to her. "You gave me everything I need." He shook his head. "If you had just listened to me, you could have walked away. But not now." Temple stood up. "You're going to disappear. Everything about you will be destroyed, and when they're done, it will be as if Anna

Kelso never existed."

"You can't hide this!" she shouted.

"They already have," he said, without looking at her.

North Springfield-Virginia-United States of America

The unmarked van rumbled along the central lane of Interstate 495, heading westward into the evening. If any of the other drivers in the sparse traffic had given it a second look, they might have noticed the opaque polyglass slits along its flanks and the air vent in the roof; but there were few people driving at this time of day, and for the most part the 495 was the domain of unmanned cargo haulers. The blank-faced, slab-sided machines hummed past the van, running lights bright around prows that had a whiskered look, like dogfish. Some of them had thinscreens along their flanks denoting cargo and livery, lighting up the road as they passed.

Shafts of color penetrated the interior of the van and made Anna Kelso blink and turn away. She shifted uncomfortably. The orange detainee jumpsuit she wore was scratchy, the fiber-paper material rough in the places where it rubbed on her skin. Restraints around her wrists and ankles gave her limited freedom of movement, but not enough to sit up or appreciably change position.

The only other person in the back of the van was Craig Tyler. His narrow face and small eyes were set in a professional expression of detachment, but Anna knew him well enough to see that he was uncomfortable with the job he'd been asked to do. Temple had charged Tyler and Drake to personally convey her from D.C. out to whatever holding facility they had lined up; the other agent was in the driver's seat, on the far side of the armored bulkhead isolating the rear section of the van.

At first, Anna had been afraid that they were taking her out to some remote spot in the projects, somewhere that they could put a bullet in the back of her head and leave her for dead; but it soon became clear things were not going to be that simple.

All she'd been able to draw out of Tyler was that the agents were taking her to a rendezvous, where she would be transferred into the care of

"contractors." The word had an ominous ring to it; anyone who had worked inside the Beltway for more than a few months knew that behind that term lay a multitude of sins. Temple had been right; she would end up inside some ghost prison, a "black site" facility off the grid, and that would be the last anyone would see of her.

"They're going to interrogate me," she said, her fear giving itself voice. "Some faceless mercenary, someone with no legal oversight, no due process." Anna stared at Tyler, who wouldn't meet her gaze. "And when they're done, when they get all they want from me, I'll be executed."