Chapter Seventeen

  I sent a ping to Linda. She answered with a screen and, "Hi, Ed. Thanks for calling, I needed a break from gardening."

  "Glad to help out, Fearless Leader. Tanya Connor and I are out for a drive. While she's been sightseeing, I've been rooting through old records. I turned up something I think you should see. Ready for a data feed with some notes?"

  "Sure. Send it."

  I did so and said, "Note the disposal of my old car."

  She read for a few moments, then whistled softly. "Wow. That was quick, wasn't it?"

  "Phenomenally so. Can you add anything? Why Mike transferred out, when, and to which other outfit?"

  "You're going to pursue this?"

  "You bet, milady. I think it has something to do with why Marie seemed to hate me today more than she did back then. The more I think about it, the less trouble I remember Marie and Mike having with each other. There was some contention and a clash or two, but nothing like between Marie and me."

  Linda looked from me to Tanya and back, then said, "Mike and Marie had an affair. It began just before you left and lasted until he died in Hannover. If I'd known, I'd have split the team, but I didn't find out about it until Marie went to Hannover when the local MPs contacted her about Mike. The Hannover MPs found her phone number in Mike's wallet."

  Huh? What? Her contact info in his wallet? Or, for that matter, anywhere on or near him?

  Linda saw my expression and said, "That was my reaction, too." Looking at Tanya, she said flatly, "We didn't do things like that. Never. If Mike had lived, I'd have traded him to another outfit immediately."

  Tanya looked confused. She asked, "Just because he had Mom's number in his wallet?"

  "Yes. Marie wasn't a local civilian or military woman. She was one of his own team members. That, in itself, was a big security and regulations breach."

  "Why?"

  "Emotions ran high enough among team members without personal entanglements. Ed, with your plates on the car, it's entirely possible someone thought you were at the wheel that night."

  "That occurred to me, too, ma'am. I've only checked the immediately available US records so far."

  "I'll see what else I can find out, too. Keep me posted."

  "Will do, Fearless Leader."

  "Later, then."

  "Later."

  She dropped the link and I rooted up German police and insurance references to the accident. Very few routine records that old had been digitized or made into microfiche; I had to place requests for scanned copies of whatever still existed. That meant I'd likely have them no sooner than Monday and more likely Tuesday or later. Oh, well. Things had already waited quite a while.

  Tanya said, "So that was the legendary Linda."

  I chuckled, "Congrats, ma'am. That wasn't a self-answering question. I think you might be making progress."

  She gave me a dim look and, "Oh, up yours. Doesn't it matter to you that she thinks someone may have tried to kill you?"

  "Not particularly. If so, they missed. What bothers me is that they killed someone else in the effort and they apparently had the juice to get rid of the evidence through official channels."

  Tanya stated, "The car. Okay, I can see all that, but what if you can't find any actual proof there was a murder?"

  Shrugging, I said, "Then someone gets away with it. Hell, they might already have. Could be any perps died of heart attacks or something. They'd be my age or older."

  "Perps? More than one?"

  "Possibly not. Just covering all bases. Finding out who ordered the immediate disposal of my car would probably tell us a lot. The XO or CO of the MP unit would have had to sign off on a car disposal. Since lots of other cars hadn't been crushed immediately, there should be something on record as a reason for rushing this one through. If there isn't, I'll call it a cover-up and push things a bit."

  "Push things how?"

  "Show what I've found to an FBI friend and let her take it from there. The FBI doesn't handle murders, but they know who does. Do you think what happened to Mike might be why your mom hates me?"

  She shook her head and sighed, "I don't know. I guess it's at least possible."

  "Good for you, but think a minute. If she thought it really was just an accident, her only likely reason for hating me would be the fact I sold him the car. The cops would definitely want to know where she was the night Mike died. You know how your mom's mind works. Does that possibility make any sense to you?"

  Staring at the screen, Tanya shook her head again slightly. After a brief pause, she turned a stern face to me and said, "No. Mom's always been the first to write off things that couldn't be helped and I don't think I like where you might be going with that line of thought."

  "I'm not going any farther with it without a lot more than we have now. Cops probably would, though. Tanya, I will say that I don't really think Marie had anything to do with it. Feel better?"

  "If that's the truth, yes."

  "It's the current truth as things seem to me. If that changes for any reason, I'll let you know. Either way, I'm not afraid to be proven wrong."

  A few moments passed, then Tanya asked, "Why don't you think she had anything to do with it?"

  "My gut says so. One of the things I didn't like about her back then; she was too confrontational, like she was always trying to prove herself. Not 'blow up in your face' confrontation, but definitely right there in your face, ready to argue or fight, whichever was required. Some things aren't worth the trouble. In any group, toes will be stepped on occasionally. Can't be helped. Most people realize that and just get on with things when they know whatever wasn't intentional."

  Sipping my drink, I sighed, "Not Marie. For example: Bump into her and an 'excuse me' wouldn't cover it. She had to bark something like 'watch where you're going!' One day Will was adding a roof rack to one of the cars. The clamp strap broke and snapped Marie in the back. Just the strap, no buckle. She whipped around, slapped his shoulder hard, and yelled, 'watch what the hell you're doing!' We all thought she was a bit high strung before, but things like that pretty much confirmed it for us. Even Connie avoided her most of the time. She said she didn't hang out with hostile loners."

  Sipping again, I said, "So anyway, that's why I don't think your mom had anything to do with the accident. If she'd hated me enough to do anything extreme, she'd have just challenged me to duke it out in the parking lot."

  Reaching in my pocket, I pulled out four coins and lined them up on the back of my hand and middle finger. I didn't toss them up at all. Dropping my hand, I pulled it straight back and reached forward to snatch the coins in free fall about two inches below their release point.

  I showed them to Tanya as I said, "Back then I could do six or seven on a good day. Your mom was faster and she could do eight or nine. Once she did ten. It was like watching a damned snake strike."

  Tanya's eyes were wide. She stated softly, "Holy. Shit."

  "Yup."

  "No, I mean I'm amazed that you can do that."

  "Ah. Well, don't be. It's about the acceptable minimum as speed exercises go. I don't keep up like I used to."

  "Can I try it?"

  Flipping a penny high at Tea's field and waiting for the plasma bang, I said, "With your coins, sure."

  Tanya blinked and yelped, "What the hell just happened?!"

  "The penny hit Tea's hull field. That's what would happen if you miss the coins. It's also why there's no trash bag."

  Blinking again, Tanya nodded slightly. "Oh. Damn!"

  We talked a bit more before the Guyana clinic appeared below and ahead. As we settled to the roof in stealth mode, I sent a ping to the front desk monitor. The woman who'd answered my previous calls said not to check in; Milla would be with us shortly. I hopped down to the roof and walked around a bit to stretch my legs.

  Milla appeared in front of me as Tanya was extending a leg to the ground. She froze in that position momentarily, then continued and came to join us. I guided the probe containing Marie's sample to hover between us.

  "Milla," I said, "You're as lovely as ever, ma'am. This is Tanya. The sample is from her mother."

  We shook hands around as Milla said, "Thank you," to me and, "It's nice to meet you," to Tanya. She focused on the sample and asked, "You have her medical records?"

  "My core has copies of everything, ma'am. Feel free."

  I felt a brief, small surge of field energy and Milla nodded. "I see." She reached through my probe's field to touch the sample with a finger and we watched a dark spot spread to encompass the sample, then apparently soak into it.

  Milla said, "When you install these nanobots, they'll sense the presence of Marie Connor's greater body and activate. Reconstruction will take two to three weeks, depending on her intake and elimination cycles. Moderate exercise would hasten the process slightly."

  Looking at Tanya, she said, "I'm afraid all I can do is arrange repair of damaged tissues according to her DNA and RNA, but I've found the human brain is marvelously adaptable in its capacity to heal and make use of new neural pathways."

  I said, "I told her there were no guarantees where brain damage is concerned. It's just too iffy. But from what I've read, Marie's damage hasn't made her lose much, if any, of her memory. When your 'bots restore motor controls and missing tissue, I expect her to recover pretty well."

  Milla canted her head slightly and said, "I hope you're right. May I expect to meet her at some future time?"

  "There'll be a time when they won't be able to justify keeping her. I'll get her down here as soon as possible."

  Nodding, Milla said, "I look forward to meeting her. Thank you for helping me extend my services, Ed. I hope you won't encounter difficulties from this action."

  "Oh, some, maybe. None we can't handle somehow. Milla, I think certain power mongers are brewing up a legal and political battle for the upcoming election year. Creating new mud to sling, you could say. Could be people won't have to sneak down here after the elections."

  She smiled in a manner that made me want to hug her and said warmly, "That would be wonderful, Ed."

  To Tanya, she said, "I wish your mother the best possible results," then to both of us, she said, "I have patients awaiting me. Goodbye."

  Milla vanished and Tanya almost whispered, "Well, she doesn't waste time with long goodbyes, does she?"

  "She's handling about fifty people at once. We tied up this piece of her persona long enough."

  "Fifty? How?"

  I grinned. "She multitasks really well. Saddle up, ma'am."

  We reboarded Tea and headed back to the US in a reverse of the high arc that had brought us to Guyana. Tanya avidly watched our takeoff as I cranked up Tea's monitor screen and searched for more info about Mike Sayer. I turned up his military and DAC assignment records, but there was a curious empty space regarding the week he died. Nothing told me where he'd been or what he'd been doing.

  Okay. I'd dig obliquely. What were Connie, Will, and Marie doing the week he died? Hiding, though they'd technically been on leave. Connie and Will had gone to Kenya to visit friends and Marie had gone to Innsbruck, Austria, then to Naples, Italy to visit friends.

  Back in the Cold War, various agencies verified all our social contacts on general principles. I found verifications of Marie's friends in two files and a record of Marie's visits in one of them. The dates checked out. She'd been clearly photographed on a Naples street the afternoon of Mike's accident.

  Hm. The accident had happened during my first week in Israel. That immediately eliminated as suspects everyone in my own agency's local pool; they all knew I'd been sent out of Germany in a hurry. We knew Congressional subpoenas had been issued for everyone in our intel pool and most of the sub-agencies surrounding ours.

  American agents were being arrested in five countries at once. An Italian newspaper published a long list of names of CIA officials, agents, and local hires. The Watergate Hearings had begun in mid-year. Largely due to the winding-down of the long-running Vietnam War, the Senate and Congress had been leaning hard on the militaries and the intel services.

  Most of us felt the subpoenas were a continuation of politically-biased attacks against President Nixon and his administration in particular and the beginning of a pogrom against the militaries and the US intelligence community as a whole.

  That belief was bolstered when Nixon resigned the following year. Gerald Ford took office and subsequently signed the Helsinki Accords, which had drastic effects on the capabilities of the American foreign intelligence services. Congress gained a stronger control of foreign policies and worked hard to reduce the powers of the President while increasing its own powers.

  And, of course, Israel's October War had begun during my first week there. The day before Mike's death, in fact. But I couldn't see any connection other than the rather vague possibility that someone had thought we were part of an op by pretending I'd gone to Israel when my car was obviously running around in Germany.

  So how would any of all that stuff seriously piss anyone off at me in particular? Or at Mike, however unlikely that seemed? Unknown. My car had been wrecked in Hannover. Why was Mike in Hannover when everybody else had scampered out of reach of subpoenas? I checked; of all my group's field people, only he had received a subpoena.

  To testify about what? Our groups didn't assassinate people or topple governments. We delivered info, money, and supplies into East Germany and pulled people out of there. We didn't even carry weapons on most missions.

  Tanya said, "Ed!" in a very insistent manner. I paused my core link and looked at her.

  "Yes?"

  "I had to call you four times."

  "I was busy. What's on your mind, ma'am?"

  "The pictures you found. I don't think it would be a good idea to show them to mom. I don't know why, but it just doesn't feel like a good idea."

  "That's your subconscious at work. It's tossing up warning flags, so we won't ignore them. I'll get the treatment into Marie without making a second trip."

  Possibly surprised to have been taken seriously, Tanya gave me a very curious look before she nodded. "Thanks, but how will you get the nanobots into her?"

  "The same way I got the sample out of her. A probe."

  "Show me one."

  With a shrug, I said, "Okay," and manifested a probe large enough to carry the sample. It looked as wispy as ultra-thin monofilament and ended in a tiny bulb. I directed it to Tanya and she closely examined it.

  I said, "The sample makes it tangible, so it could set off monitor alarms. Unless you can think of a good reason for a second visit today, we might have to use the squirrel idea. One really fit squirrel would do, I think."

  "I've been thinking about that, too. A squirrel is a kind of rodent. They might kill it if they can't catch it easily. What about using a bird? When it got tired, they'd catch it and just toss it outside, wouldn't they?"

  "I wonder. Birds are a flu vector these days. They might run it through a lab for tests. No guarantee it would survive that."

  "Then what can we use?"

  "Good question. Flying bugs are out of season right now."

  Tanya slumped in her seat and studied the world beyond the flitter for a time, then said in a quiet tone, "Maybe we're back to the candy idea."

  Hm. Or not. Stop by a Dollar Tree store and buy some of those superballs that bounce like crazy. Wait for a door to open and send one in.

  "Nope. Dollar store superballs."

  "Whats?"

  "You'll see. Drop one and it bounces almost back up to where it was released."

  She nodded. "Ah. Okay. I've seen those."

  "We'll shoot one into the building from the street to deal with the alarms. I'll send the probe in after it. We'll dump the others in the street so it looks like somebody dropped his balls."

  Tanya grinned. "I like it! Yeah! Superballs!"

  We stopped in Miami to find our ammo. Once I located a store, I turned on my personal protective field to avoid leaving fingerprints, bought a six-pack of one-inch superballs, and we headed for Ocala and Lake George.

  Landing in the same clearing where we'd begun our trip, I let Galatea vanish with my usual thanks. We walked around at the edge of the lake for a short time before again mounting our boards and running maneuvers above the lake.

  After a while we headed for Tanya's apartment and let ourselves in. I called Galatea back and she landed in stealth mode to pick us up, then we went to Marie's nursing home.

  Again wearing my p-field, I used a tendril to scuff one of the superballs on the surface of the street, then rubbed one side of it hard against a car's tire for contact residue.

  About fifteen minutes later, a guy headed for the nursing home's front doors from the parking lot. When the doors opened for him, I used the field tendril to sling the superball into the opening. The two guys at the door ducked and dodged and alarms sounded the instant the ball went beyond the entrance alcove.

  We saw the ball bounce hard once, then bound away down the corridor. I sent the probe in after it and found Marie asleep, her open-sore hip aimed at the ceiling. Great. The probe slid under the sheets from the top and found the sore spot covered by a bandage. It forced its way under the adhesive edge and firmly tucked the sample back into the bed sore.

  Tanya and I watched a magnified view of the nanobots waking up and spreading out. She ecstatically jumped to her feet to yell like a cheerleader watching a touchdown play.

  "All right! Go! Go! Go!"

  She happily grabbed my face to kiss me hard. Well, I mean she kissed me firmly, which made me hard. Whatever. You know what I meant. We watched the screen and I adjusted it when Marie moved. Her hand cupped the sore spot and she rolled on her back.

  I withdrew the probe further for a view of the bed and scanned Marie. The 'bots had entered her bloodstream and spread out around her body to begin making more 'bots. On our screen it soon looked as if she was completely composed of them, but that's because their permeation was thorough and the green dots used to represent them were so much larger than the actual 'bots. They quickly blended together and it looked as if they'd completely taken over Marie's body.

 

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