John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Steinfeld was talking about techniques for ducking the ship’s radar, avoiding its infrared scans. But this man Torrence wasn’t fully listening; he was staring at Karakos.

The Yank suspects me, Karakos thought.

Karakos gazed back at Torrence with wide-open, clear, guileless eyes, smiling like a big brother.

He could see Torrence’s jaw muscles clenching.

“The ship is the Hermes’ Grandson,” Steinfeld was saying.

And Karakos thought, It’s a sign. The messenger of the gods will be my messenger to the SA…

And he must do something about the hijacking, of course. The Hermes’ Grandson was carrying supplies of all kinds to the SA. He could not permit it to fall to the Resistance.

“Ship-assault training commences at 1600 tomorrow evening,” Steinfeld was saying, rolling up his charts.

The others were going out. Except Torrence and Claire; Torrence waited to talk to Steinfeld. “How about we assign Claire shore correspondence duty for the assault on the ship,” Torrence was saying. Claire turned a glare at him. He ignored her. “I don’t think she’s ready to go back into combat just now. She’s had too much too soon.”

“Who the hell do you think you are, Torrence?” Claire demanded.

“The question of Torrence’s personal sense of identity is moot,” Steinfeld said dryly. “I had already decided that you are to do shore correspondence that night, Claire. Torrence’s suggestion was unnecessary. You’ve got good comm training, you’ll be most useful there.”

He tucked his satchel of charts under his arm and beat a hasty retreat, hurrying out into the hall.

Karakos pretended to follow. But he lingered in the hallway. He could hear very well from there; the door was not quite closed.

“Be realistic,” Torrence was saying. “You’re sick of killing, Claire; you’re not even sure the killing is the right thing to do. Those nightmares… when you’re shaky like that, you risk the other people.”

“Torrence”—her voice wavered between outrage and tears—“I don’t need you to tell me that I’m not ready for a mission right now. I know when I’m ready and when I’m not. And this stuff about risking other people is bullshit. You’re doing it to protect me.”

“Come off it!”

“I know you, Hard-Eyes.” Saying his nickname with that sneering undertone that meant the name carried some sort of objectionable freight of machismo. “I know your condescending, paternalistic bullshit.”

“That what you call caring about someone?”

That slowed her up for a moment. Two moments. But not three. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want you to care about me. But I don’t want you to make my decisions for me. You could at least have discussed it with me before going to Steinfeld.”

“Now you’re being childish. There’s a chain of command here.”

“Fuck that, it has nothing to do with you being a captain. You took it over my head because you like being in charge of me—of your girlfriend.”

“Fuck you, then,” Torrence said coldly, evenly. “Take care of yourself. You aren’t going to like it.”

He started through the door.

But Karakos had sensed that the argument was peaking. He was on his way down the stairs, thinking, Maybe this woman Claire Rimpler is the way.

The New York City subways hadn’t changed much. They were still rackety, grimy, graffiti-ugly, plagued by aging equipment and vandalism. They were still undermaintained; they were still dangerous.

Corte Stoner was riding the subway that night for all those reasons.

The noise would cover conversation; the danger and discomfort kept most potential eavesdroppers away.

But Stoner was worried. He was worried about the two guys he was meeting here. He could see them through the window in the door to the next car down, two men lurching with the swaying of the rocketing train.

The husky black guy in the real-cloth gray suit was Stu Brummel, his wife’s brother (a leftist for a brother-in-law, for God’s sake!) He could understand the suit; it went with Brummel’s cover. He was a lawyer. But did he have to wear something so expensive? Real cloth? Was that even politically correct?

The little Spanish guy in the blue printout was the Nicaraguan, whom Stu referred to only as Lopez. Stoner had found him in CIA Domestic files, though: Carlos Lopez. Supposedly working in the SA, ranked lieutenant.

Brummel had told Stoner the rest: The NR had its Second Alliance moles. Despite all the SA’s promises, none of the Hispanics would become influential in the organization

The NR’s mole cultivated Lopez’s resentment and fanned it into outright rebellion by letting Lopez in on the Second Alliance’s long-term plans for Central and South America: complete subjugation.

Lopez was flipped, had changed sides, but the NR had kept him in place in the Second Alliance; he worked as an intelligence funnel for Smoke and Steinfeld.

Brummel wasn’t New Resistance. He was a “post-Maoist,” a believer in a democratic socialism who borrowed some of Mao Tse-tung’s theory—the kind of guy, Stoner thought, Mao would have purged.

Brummel considered the NR politically tainted, suspect, to be contacted and used only when necessary. Which is why he’d contemptuously told Stoner too much about Lopez.

But, hell, Brummel could be up to anything. Maybe he was going to deliver Stoner into the hands of men who’d take Stoner hostage, demand money from the government for his release. Maybe he was a cold motherfucker who’d decided that his sister—who didn’t approve of his activities, after all—had to be sacrificed for the revolution.

Or maybe he was on the level. Maybe…

As the train roared around a turn in the tunnel, racing to meet the line of lights in the ceiling, Brummel and Lopez came into Stoner’s car, looking around.

It was after midnight; they were alone.

They stood close together in the center of the cold, trash-strewn, otherwise empty subway car, holding on to the grimy chrome stanchions, forced by the train’s motion into an absurd, jerky dance, lurching to the percussion of the wheels, shouting to be heard; shouting what would get them arrested in other places.

Stoner looked at the two men and felt a long, slow, sickening wave of disorientation go through him. Something in him shrieked silently, What am I doing?

And he told himself, I’m doing it for Janet. For Cindy. And because I have to survive.

But still he felt like he was two men inside and one of them hated the other one.

“You sweep your house again?” Brummel asked. His expression was always the same: sullen amusement.

Stoner nodded. “Found a bug in each room. And I’ve picked up a tail. Pretty sure I lost him today.”

Lopez, a fox-faced man with shiny, short-clipped hair, small eyes, and a way of snapping his head around to look eagle-intensely at each man who was talking, said, “But you are not completely sure?”

“Sure as anyone can be. Which means, not completely.”

“We’re okay here, Lopez,” Brummel said. “You bring it, Stoner?”

Stoner snorted and shook his head. “I’m not going to hand files over to you guys till I know what I’m getting in return.”

“How we know we trust you?” Lopez asked, smiling, raising both shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Could be you want to penetrate us. You could be a plant for CIA Domestic.”

Brummel nodded. “Possibility exists.”

Stoner gave Brummel a look of exasperated appeal, said, “Come on, I’m your sister’s husband. She’d never set you up.”

“But you might use her to set us up, man. Maybe your career ain’t going so well. Maybe your bossman don’t like you being married to a nigger—so you got to prove yourself. You could be using extractors on her, twisting her mind around. CIA scumbags capable of anything. No, man. You got more to prove than we do.”