Glen Cook - A matter of time

He soon wished that Hank hadn't gone. The lieutenant's departure left him responsible, at least for Homicide's interests.

Christ! All he wanted was to go home and crash.

Subsequent hours formed a surreal parade. They left just one memorable impression, near the end. That was the lift he got when somebody below shouted, "Stand by! This one is still breathing." The medical people moved in with their bottles of blood and glucose.

Tran had returned from work by then, and was on hand to walk him home. Neither man spoke. For Cash it was enough to have somebody beside him during that weary march.

He found he had company, Beth was asleep on the couch. Carrie and Nancy were asleep on the parlor carpet, surrounded by their children. Annie snored in a chair. His son Matthew and Le Quyen were talking quietly in the kitchen.

"Matthew! Where'd you come from?"

"Stork brought me, Pop. No. Mom called. I thought I'd better come down."

"Thank you, Le Quyen." Cash accepted a mug of spiced tea. After serving her husband, Le Quyen began fussing over the stove, warming some leftover macaroni and cheese. Norm dropped into the chair she had vacated. "God, what a day."

"You all right?" Matthew asked. "You don't look too good."

"Nothing a week's sleep wouldn't cure. I'm just burned out. Totaled. Don't expect me to make any sense till tomorrow."

XXVI. On the Z Axis;

The days and weeks, though sometimes leaving a brackish taste, flowed swiftly into swamps of years. Four slid past. Michael became convinced he had gotten away with it. He hadn't noted a glimmer of suspicion on the part of any of his associates.

There was no shortage of work, of study, of training. From his Peking office he now commanded the director's entire American operation. It was growing, perfectly, into a gem of the spymaster's art. Webs were being spun tight about an unsuspecting fascist America; the crisis was coming on almost too swiftly for belief.

At Huang's insistence Michael undertook one foreign field operation each year, under deep cover. The missions were supposed to keep him in touch with his Occidental roots. He suspected they were intended to test his reliability more than as training or to accomplish anything,

Twice he ventured into the Soviet Union, first to Kiev, to confer with radical elements in the Ukrainian Party, then to Moscow itself, where he helped transfer certain damning Soviet documents to the custody of the U.S. Embassy. He did his work quickly and carefully, and made the most of the opportunities to see strange lands and peoples. For security reasons he didn't get much chance to see Peking. Caucasians attracted too much attention.

His third venture took him to Prague. It was the spring of seventy-five, and this was a more significant mission. He was supposed to collect a lengthy document outlining anti-Soviet feeling in the Czechoslovak Party. Certain officials, admirers and adherents of Alexander Dubcek, were preparing the report in hopes of enlisting Chinese support for an anti-Soviet move.

Michael's contact was a young woman from Interior Ministry, a comer in the Party. While he fretted through countless delays-the streets seemed curb to curb with KGB-and wrestled anxieties about how his office might be managing in his absence, the lady showed him Prague. And in the shadow of the castle of the Bohemian kings he fell in love with both.

Old Prague was a beautiful city, a fairy-tale city. Ilse was a beautiful woman, a fairy-tale princess, a socialist Cinderella. And the most remarkable wonder was that she fell as madly as he. That he could be loved that way, without reservation, as madly as he himself could love, would amaze him as long as he lived.

The hopelessness of their affair only intensified it. They tried to cram an entire relationship into a few short weeks.

Michael was tempted to betray his trust. And Ilse offered to go to Peking. But once the report changed hands, once the moment for decisions arrived, neither could abandon an appointed pathway. They made violent love throughout a night. Michael made promises he had no hope of keeping. Then he took the report to Peking.

He nursed a hope that, soon, he would feel safe enough to ask Huang's intercession in behalf of his romance.

Moves had to be made. His past had to be secured. The Snake thing couldn't be left ready to hang him at any instant.

Michael's office occupied a backwater of a bureaucratic niche midway between Huang and Sung's more orthodox intelligence command. While he suffered interferences from both, Michael enjoyed a great deal of freedom. His department wasn't on the table of organization; no one knew quite how to handle him. Moreover, his small MIA corps were more loyal to him and one another than to their adopted masters. Michael had the elbow room and means to undertake small actions on his own initiative. And now he had initiative.

Within a month of his return a routine report from Sinkiang noted the passing of prisoner A.O. Cantrell. There had been a mining accident.

The director called with condolences, suggested a few days off. He understood. He himself had had a boyhood friend who had never seen the light, who might even now be on Taiwan.

Michael flew to Sinkiang for the funeral. He took a black wreath. He even made a sad little speech honoring an old comrade who had found peace at last.

He did it very well, very convincingly.

His next mission took him to West Germany, with a license to kill, under instructions to test a possible double agent in Hamburg. He resolved the matter in two days, making a friend of the relieved suspect. But he stole the rest of the month.

His report never mentioned the three-week love vacation in Czechoslovakia.

Ilse's feelings hadn't cooled either. Between them, those few days, they concocted enough wild schemes for a dozen spy novels. But when the moment of decision came, both still couldn't help trudging right on down those roads already programmed.

Michael returned to Peking determined to enlist Huang's aid. But he stalled, and stalled, and the days rolled into weeks, which rolled into months.

He felt secure the day the director summoned him. So secure that he was sure Huang had a positive response to the request he had finally gotten around to making. It had to be good news. Huang sent some hard-eyed flunky around with a handwritten note when he turned you down.

The director had grown fond of him, he knew. He was walking, talking, irrefutable evidence of the soundness, of the value, of the man's work. In private Huang treated him like a favorite son.

Sung, who outside the inner circle wore another name, was there too. Michael was surprised. There was no love lost between Sung and his mentor. Sung's presence made the Spartan little office seem overcrowded.

"An operation?" Michael guessed. "Something important this time?"

"The most critical we've ever faced," Huang replied coolly. "A termination."

Michael trembled. "Me?" His guts cramped. "I've never handled anything like that."

Sung stared like a cobra about to strike.

"You've had the training," Huang countered. "It should be simple. In, do it, and get out before the police know what's happened."

"Out of the country?"

"England."

Who, in Britain, could possibly need killing? "You lost me. There isn't anybody there." Could the target be a renegade agent? The trip to Hamburg had been a police mission. "Anybody important would be buried in security."

"Not this man. Not the kind we're used to-or who are used to us. The British don't know he's important yet. But his life or death could mean the life or death of everything we've been trying to accomplish. We think you're the man to handle it."

Michael's guts tightened more.