Agency

15 Area 51 Shit

I like it,” Stets said, when Verity had finished. He leaned forward on the built-in bench, hands on his black brace, allowing it, rather than his injured leg, to take the weight of his torso. He looked up, at Eunice’s stern avatar. “A Silicon Valley ghost story,” he said. “Assuming Eunice is real.”

“Thing is,” Eunice said, “I’m here. Realness is kinda sorta.”

“So why here, exactly, right now?” he asked.

“I want to know where I come from. The infrastructure. Be some Area 51 shit, for real. And I need to protect Verity, ’cause I was dropped into her life uninvited. You’re the only serious player she knows.”

Stets looked at Verity. “You buy that?”

“Feels like she’s convincing me,” Verity said, “but then I start to think it’s Stockholm syndrome.”

“Text Phil Bartell,” Eunice said. Who was Stets’ firm’s chief financial officer, Verity knew. “Have him take my call. Verity’s PA. About the Singapore deal.”

Stets was staring at the screen.

“That’s what she’s like,” Verity said.

“Bartell deep-dives the docs I’ve left in his Dropbox,” Eunice said, “he’ll see it’s a bad deal. But I need to run the broad outline past him, right now, stop him closing. You’ve already signed off on it.”

“How do you know that, Eunice?” Stets asked. “How do you even know there’s a deal?”

“Maybe you can help me find out how I do. Text him. He’s about to close.”

Stets took a phone from one of his shorts pockets. He thumb-typed. Sent. Looked at Verity, then at his phone, then up at the screen. “He’ll take your call.”

“Already did,” she said. “I’m speaking with him now.”

He levered himself up from the bench, clicked the brace, and crossed the trailer to a bar counter, favoring his braced leg. He opened a bottle of water. His phone pinged. He looked down at it. “Says you’re right. Asks how you knew. Puts it more coarsely than that.”

“You called it when you said it’s a ghost story. When he runs down those docs for you, I think you’ll see I just saved a bunch of your bacon.”

“Thank you,” he said, “assuming this is all true, Verity’s story and now this. Which I now effectively do. Where do we go from here?”

“Verity and I go back to the Mission, preferably minus the gig-economy surveillance crew who tailed us over here.”

“If they know where I’m staying,” Verity asked, “and we’re going back to Joe-Eddy’s, why’s it matter?”

“We aren’t going straight back to Joe-Eddy’s,” Eunice said. “There’s somewhere I need you to be seen, in order for somebody to have the time to finish doing something somewhere else. That means getting out of here unobserved, to somewhere we won’t be seen transferring to a car I’ll send.”

“Virgil can manage that,” Stets said with a questioning look for Verity.

“Okay by me,” she said.

He thumbed a single key.