Agency

65 One-Shot

The first thing Verity noted, past Virgil’s shoulder, was the Candy Crush Saga girl from 3.7, seated against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling mauve drapery, thumbs busy on her phone.

“Our new hire, there,” said Ash, via the burner phone’s earbuds, “the one on her phone.”

“Cursion had her on the lookout for me, in a coffee place where I went with Eunice,” Verity said quickly, under her breath. “Knows me on sight.” The girl, having now seen her, stared, startled, thumbs gone still.

“Don’t look as if you recognize her,” said Ash. “She must live locally. Assignment overlap would be a problem, with that business model.”

Virgil was headed toward Geary now, pulling the drone.

Verity hurried to catch up, the strap of her bag digging into her shoulder with the added weight of the charger. She reflexively gave the girl a distracted smile, in spite of Ash’s order, as she and Virgil rounded the corner, making for the entrance. Saw nothing in the lobby suggestive of Cursion, though she supposed anyone could be a Followr. She saw Virgil slip the doorman some folded bills as they went out, and bowed her hoodied head over the controller case.

“This way,” Sevrin said, suddenly beside her, taking the controller case. Head still down, she made no eye contact, recognizing his fancy bus-driver shoes and zero-accent accent. He led her around what seemed to be an identical van, white this time but with windows equally dark. He slid open the passenger door, helped her up and in. Virgil climbed in behind her, Sevrin passing him the helmet case, which he placed on the second row of passenger seats.

Choosing the window seat behind the driver, she shrugged off her bag, putting it on the seat behind hers, beside the black case. Virgil was helping Sevrin get the drone up now, and onto the seat beside her. Over their shoulders, through a momentary gap in passing vehicles, she saw someone emerging from the bagel restaurant across the street. Short hair, wire-rimmed glasses, forty-something. Seeing the look of recognition as he saw her, she instantly knew that it had been the back of his crew-cut head she’d seen as he’d surveyed the junk on Joe-Eddy’s worktable.

“Across the street,” she said, “crew cut, glasses. Works for Cursion.”

“On it,” said Conner, as Sevrin scrambled over the console, into the driver’s seat, as what she thought of as the projector hatch in the drone’s carapace opened, something neutrally colored and vaguely cylindrical lifting out of it on quad rotors, more noisily than Verity’s drones from their Pelican case, to whisk out the open door.

In the center of the street now, something like an explosive exhalation of vape. She couldn’t see the man with the wire-rims.

Then Sevrin was driving them up Geary, away from a growing chorus of irritated horns. Virgil, who’d fallen back into the seat beside the drone, was fastening his seatbelt.

“What did you do?” Verity asked Conner.

“Fentanyl analog,” said Conner, “aerosol.”

“You killed him?” she asked.

“Might have gotten him run over,” Conner said, “but more likely he just blacked out. Ash’ll be pissed, but his records indicate he has some moves. Didn’t want him getting across the street.”

“Trimethyl phentanylum?” Ash asked, not sounding particularly angry to Verity.

“They got it on a darknet,” Conner said. “Right drone and aerosolizer, you’re good to go. Installed thirty minutes before Verity turned up.”

Sevrin, having taken a left, took another, headed in the direction opposite the one they’d departed in, on a street parallel to Geary, driving as though nothing had happened. Sirens seemed to be converging, but then she realized the van was directly behind the Clift.

“Who was that?” asked Wilf.

“Someone Cursion sent to bug Joe-Eddy’s,” Verity said, sitting back and buckling her seatbelt. “Eunice showed him to me in a feed, when he was up there. He saw me getting in the van, recognized me, started to cross, but Conner zapped him.” She looked at the drone, which Virgil and Sevrin hadn’t had time to belt in. “Thanks, Conner.”

“De nada.”

“Where are we going?” Verity asked.

“For a change of license plates and the application of decals,” Ash said. “We had planned to take you back to the Bertrand-Howell project site, but that’s been scratched, given media have a link between you and Stets’ star assistant.”

“‘Star assistant,’” said Virgil, who hadn’t opened his mouth since climbing into the van, from his seat beside the drone. “You write for tabloids?”

“Quoting one’s site, two minutes ago,” said Ash.