Cally's War

Chapter Seven

Cally stood at the door of 302C. She had the top of the briefcase unzipped, but held the handles together in one hand so the things inside didn’t show. She shut her eyes for a moment and pulled on her sales persona. As she opened them a wide, bright smile spread across her face, lighting her eyes with enthusiasm. She rang the bell and waited.

In a minute, she heard a rustling sound on the other side of the door. Probably the mistress looking through the peephole. The door opened.

“Uh… hello?” The woman’s hair was in hot rollers, her face bare like she’d just washed it.

“Hi, I’m Lisa from Pink Passion Cosmetics, and I wondered if you’d be interested in our free five-minute makeover this afternoon?” She radiated helpful good cheer.

“Five minutes… I don’t have to buy anything?” The girl’s eyes had widened at the word “free.” She looked at the saleswoman’s fresh, expertly made-up face thoughtfully.

“Not a thing. I give you the makeover, leave you a catalog and my number, and if you decide you want anything from it, you call me. If you don’t, you don’t.” She gave a friendly, slightly conspiratorial smile.

“Five minutes.” The girl looked at her watch. “Uh, sure. Come on in.” She stood back and gestured for the assassin to come in.

Cally casually put a hand to her belt as she walked through the door and flipped the small switch. An instant after the mistress closed the door, Cally had dropped the briefcase and was on her, knocking her to the floor beside it and landing on top, switchblade at the other woman’s throat.

“Lady, you have two choices. Die messily right here, right now, or cooperate and live. I don’t care which you pick.” She pressed the knife slightly into the woman’s throat for emphasis. There was a trick to holding it at just the right angle to feel pointy enough to get the other person’s attention without actually breaking the skin. It was especially tricky with a knife that was reasonably sharp, as this one was. Fortunately, she had a lot of practice.

“Oh my God, ohmygod, don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. Ohmygod. What do you want? I’ll do what you want, just please don’t kill me.”

“I don’t need to kill you, I just need to borrow your apartment for a little while.” She fished in the bag and came up with the cooler, checking it quickly for the telltale red mark. “Drink this. It’s drugged, of course. To make you sleep and get you out of my way.” She handed it to the frightened woman.

“How do I know it’s not poison?”

“You don’t. You just know you’re going to die right here, right now, painfully and messily, if you don’t drink it. It’s the only chance you’ve got. Make up your mind, I’m on a tight schedule.”

The other woman began unscrewing the cap, but stopped suddenly.

“Charles. You’re after Charles.” Her voice carried dawning horror.

“Who?” Cally’s face was a study in bewilderment. “I was told you lived alone. Is there going to be someone else here?” she asked sternly, pressing the knife a bit harder for emphasis, but still careful not to break the skin.

“Uh… no,” the woman lied quickly, “Charles is… is my cat.”

“Oh great. And I’m allergic. Would you hurry up and drink that before I have to kill you?”

The woman stared at her fixedly, as if trying to memorize her features, and downed the drug. Cally watched for the ten minutes or so it took her eyes to glaze over and put the knife away.

“You’ll sleep more comfortably in your bed. Come on and let’s get you in there to lie down.” She got the woman up and helped her into the bedroom, fastening her hands and feet gently but firmly with a couple of the plastic ties and gagging her. The drugged woman wouldn’t be coordinated enough to get out and make trouble, and she’d be passed out soon enough. Cally had been careful to touch as little as possible in the apartment so far, but she’d need to wear rubber gloves for the rest of the evening.

She pulled out her PDA and looked at the map on the screen with the blinking dot that indicated the target’s car. She’d made good time dealing with the non-target. Petane was still a good fifteen minutes out.

There wasn’t really a whole lot left to do to get ready for him. One of the kitchen chairs would be suitable for the interrogation. She moved it behind the door, where he wouldn’t see it and get spooked coming in. She found some disposable paper cups in the bathroom and got a drink while she was making sure she wouldn’t feel any sudden needs to leave the target alone even for a few minutes. Well, before killing him, anyway. She wrinkled her nose distastefully at the unchanged litter box, the odor of which was not quite overwhelmed by a large bowl of rose and apple potpourri, and went back into the living room to tuck the used paper cup into the briefcase. No sense in leaving bits of third-party DNA lying around that blatantly.

She took the pantyhose out of their packages and cut the legs apart. They weren’t as quick and easy as the plastic ties, but the target was likely to fight his bonds at first, and, tied right, they wouldn’t leave marks. She took off her jacket and stuffed the pantyhose into her pockets. Then there was nothing left to do but wait. She had given considerable thought in planning how to take him down. On the one hand, she wanted to be very careful what chemicals were in his bloodstream post-mortem. On the other, he outweighed her by a fair bit and was taller. Even with her upgraded strength, leverage was important. He was an obvious juv, so he had nannites that might successfully scavenge out the residue of ether or chloroform before she finished interrogating him. Or they might not. Or he might be immune. His record didn’t show any notable martial training beyond what he would have gotten in basic, but you really never knew. Finally she had decided she was going to have to just try to pin him and choke him out, but have a push-button injector of the least detectable general anesthetic she had and have it ready as backup in case he was more trouble hand-to-hand than his record indicated.

“Okay, buckley, wake up.” She tapped the screen “You can quit watching any cameras he’s driven past already. Watch the cameras I’ve got in the parking lot out here. When he parks, tell me… uh… wait, no don’t tell me. Just make the screen turn blue.” If I tell it to tell me anything, I swear to god it’ll pipe up at exactly the wrong time and I’ll end up trashing another PDA. And I need it to record the interrogation.

“You’re afraid I’ll say the wrong thing at the wrong time and get us both killed, aren’t you?” it accused.

“No, I’d just prefer not to have any unnecessary noises at this stage in the mission.”

“Yes, you are. You don’t have to lie to spare my feelings.”

“Shut up, buckley.”

“Right.”

She waited in silence as the dot approached on the road. The screen flashed blue and she punched the options to set it to record when activated, flipping it closed before standing and stretching briefly, coming to rest in a loose ready stance against the wall behind the door, about a foot from the hinges. The PDA would need to be less than thirty percent of the distance from the subject to the damper to record effectively.

The wait seemed longer than it really was. Adrenaline had already caused her sense of time dilation to kick in. She could feel her heart beating in her chest and already she felt that mission sensation of being just that extra bit more alive. The colors in the room were richer and more intense than they’d been a few minutes before. Mingled with the pet and air freshener odors of the apartment she could smell the tea the mistress had been drinking in the kitchen. She could hear the slight hollow tone to her own breathing as the sound damper tried to compensate for the noise.

It wasn’t long at all before she heard the key in the old-fashioned lock. She forced herself to stay loose and perfectly still, balanced on the edge of the moment, as the handle turned and the door began to swing inward.

He walked in with less situational awareness than a two-year-old, who would have at least been interested in his surroundings. As he shut the door behind him with one hand, he turned expectantly towards the kitchen. Cally doubted he even saw her out of the corner of his eye as she padded up behind him, simultaneously grabbing his hair and kicking the back of his knee sharply, as she pulled backward.

As his knees buckled, bringing his head below her own, her other arm snaked around his throat, the bone pushing into his windpipe, the hand in his hair sliding smoothly to hold the back of his head, giving him nowhere to go for air.

Unfortunately, his drive for survival finally kicked in and he began thrashing frantically, trying to break her grip.

The easiest way to respond would have been to drop down and finish the neck break. Taking a capable person, and Petane marginally qualified for that category, alive was always harder than a simple kill.

She didn’t know whether it was conscious design or instinct that made him try to kick out towards an end table full of fragile-looking knick-knacks, but leaving signs of a scuffle in the apartment would be bad, very bad. As would accidentally strangling the guy. And dammit, I’ve lost count!

She backed around and dragged him to the middle of the floor where his thrashing couldn’t reach anything, and watched the second hand on the wall clock for what she hoped was the amount of time left, lowering him to the floor a few seconds after his struggles stilled.

Lousy instincts — he didn’t even hesitate on the threshold. She sighed with relief as she found a pulse. Having to do CPR on the prick would have been annoying.

She worked quickly to secure his hands and feet with plastic ties before grabbing the chair and pantyhose. There was a strong risk that securing him to the chair would bring him around before she was finished. As it did today, of course. She had barely gotten his wrists secured and the plastic removed — too likely to leave marks — when he came around and started yelling and thrashing again and tipped himself over.

She ignored him and secured each leg to the appropriate chair leg before setting the thing upright again. He was still yelling, of course. What a moron. “Look, you idiot,” she explained. “Hear that hollow sound? It’s a damper. Nobody can hear you outside the room, you’re just scratching up your throat.”

She would have liked to light a cigarette and have a smoke while he wound down, but leaving stale smoke lying around a scene just wouldn’t work at all. So she just tilted her head to the side and watched him, waiting. He ran out of steam sooner rather than later, thank God.

“You’re probably wondering why I called this meeting.” She smirked, and then sighed. “Look, Petane, we are doing a comprehensive review of the information you’ve provided, checking it for the record, including what you say now, measured against how you’ve reported it in the past. The sooner you spill it, the sooner you can get back there and give your girlfriend some stimulants to wake her up and get on with your night.” She shrugged, “Look, mine not to reason why, mine just to get these fucking interrogations out of the way so I can get back to real work.”

“Geez, you guys have totally compromised me, you know that? Or as good as. Why the hell did you take the risk of meeting me here? Why not just ask for a meet at the dead drop and give me time to set it up righ… oh. Counter Intel.” His shoulders slumped. “Are you Fleet Strike, or Army?” His voice had the dead, hopeless tone of a man who really didn’t expect to live until morning.

“Very astute of you.” She grinned ferally. “But you can still be useful, Colonel. We just need to catalog how much damage you’ve done and then tell you what we want you to tell them. You should be a happy man. If we can make you useful enough, you may just get to live.”

“Wait… I… I wanna see some ID,” he said.

“Oh, so you ask for ID. So you knew who you were dealing with when you decided to become a fucking traitor.” She practically spat the words at him.

He blanched.

“So, Colonel, why did you turn.” It wasn’t a question, but a demand. “I want to hear you say it, you worthless son of a bitch.”

“I couldn’t help it! They were gonna kill me!” Any vestiges of calm the man had had collapsed. “I got into this fix protecting you guys! You said you were gonna take care of me and then you were nowhere when they came for me. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“I suppose it never crossed your mind to die like a soldier,” she said coldly.

“Yeah, you try it sometime.” His voice was bitter and low.

“So, from the beginning.” She sat down on the couch and gestured casually with one arm. “Let’s just start with you ‘getting into this fix’ as you put it. Start there. Don’t leave anything out. We know most of it. So, needless to say, you really, really don’t want to leave anything out. I’m not a very nice person when I’m pissed off.” She flipped open the PDA and tapped the record button. She was well inside the record zone.

“Okay, the beginning. So I was a major when I got recalled from the reserves at the beginning of the war. I’d had a couple of jobs with… unappreciative CO’s and been passed over for promotion and retired before the war. But for a staff command, I wasn’t high on the rejuv list and the drugs started running low before they got to me. But I was on the list, dammit.” He squirmed a bit and rubbed his chin against his shirt to scratch an apparent itch.

“Look, do I have to rehash the whole damn thing? You guys know this part. I was pretty high up in the local lodge. I was a Mason, my dad and granddad had been Masons. And they were good guys, and I trusted them and they trusted me, but then you guys from counter intel came down the pike…”

“And bought you.”

“Yeah, well, you guys came around asking about clubs and fraternities and secret societies and all, and I wanted to help out and everything—”

“In exchange for…” she prompted.

“Yeah, all right, I appreciated you guys righting a wrong there by making the efficiency report by that self-righteous asshole disappear, okay? And you guys always wanted to know stupid things, and everybody knows this secret society paranoia about the Masons is so much bullshit. Anyway, then you guys wanted to know, you know, anywhere lodge members from out of town stayed whenever they came through. And I wouldn’t have known, except for a younger lodge member thought I was so high up in the lodge I already knew, and let something slip. And yeah, I guess I was pretty ticked that there was crap going on in my own lodge that nobody had told me about.”

“And what did you think we were going to do with that information?”

“Look, I didn’t speculate, okay, if that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t my business. What had the lodge done for me? They sure as hell hadn’t offered me anything like rejuv for me and my wife, and things were getting kinda tough at home, and we were supposed to get it anyway, but I appreciated you guys speeding it up. I knew it wasn’t my place to speculate about your business, okay?” His face wrinkled up in sudden bewilderment for a moment and he stopped talking, blinking a few times.

“Hey, how come you’re carrying a buckley instead of an AID?” he asked.

“The rejuv would be for the same wife you’re cheating on right now?” Her gesture took in the entire apartment.

“Hey, I love my wife,” he protested, “but high-powered, dominant males were never wired for centuries of monogamy. It’s just something about guys that women just aren’t wired to understand, if you know what I mean. Men are what we are, all of us. But I do love my wife. And you still didn’t say why you’re not carrying an AID.” This last was said with the smug expression of someone who has cleverly gotten the upper hand.

“You really are a pathetic schmuck, aren’t you? I’m asking the questions.”

“Look, why get all pissy over it? You guys always showed me ID bef—”

She saw his face freeze as the penny finally dropped, and his lips clamped shut. What an absolute fucking moron. A whole team burned because of this idiot and the other morons who tried to cover up their opsec mistakes by recruiting him.

“I’m not saying another word without ID,” he said.

“Of course you are,” Cally said conversationally, “because whoever the hell I am, I’m still the damned scary bitch who has you tied to a chair under a sound damper.”

“Hey, babe, there are worse things than being tied up by a beautiful woman,” he smirked.

Cally was a blur of motion coming off the couch, her heel impacting his groin with such force that he blacked out.

Unfortunately, as he was coming around, she heard, very faintly through the damping, the doorbell and a voice calling something that sounded like it might have been, “Acropolis Pizza.” She glared at Petane.

“Ow,” he winced, glancing at the doorbell and cringing away from her as much as the chair would allow.

“Fuck. Goddam Murphy really hates my ass today.” She grabbed a couple of bandannas out of the briefcase and gagged him quickly, dragging the chair into the kitchen. She couldn’t tell whether the doorbell had rung again or not by the time she moved the briefcase behind the door, grabbed her wallet, and answered it.

The pizza guy’s eyes darted across her tousled hair and slightly smudged makeup and immediately came to a wrong but convenient conclusion, and his eyes had a knowing twinkle as he checked the amount on the ticket.

“Got a pizza for ‘Charles’ at this address. That’ll be fifty-four ninety seven.”

She peeled off a few bills and traded him for the pizza, giving him her best ditzy sex-flushed smile. “Thanks.”

She watched him bop down the stairs, whistling. The smile didn’t leave her face until after the door was closed and re-locked.

After dropping off the pizza and retrieving Petane from the kitchen, she pulled the gag out and sat back down.

“Okay, asshole. Get back to talking.” She put her face down about six inches from his. “Oh, and by the way, do not ever imply that I would even consider doing anything sexual with you. You really do not want to do that. Understand?”

He nodded rapidly.

“Please don’t kick me again. I… I… And don’t make me talk or kill me either. Please? These guys play for keeps. You can’t be a Mason, and I guess you’re not counter intel, so I don’t know who the hell or what the hell you are but those guys play for keeps. As far as I know, I’m the only one of that lodge or the original counter intel weenies who’s still alive. Please, lady, you can hurt me, but I can’t talk to you or I’m gonna die. Please don’t kill me.” He started to shake.

“I wish to God all this had played out differently, but I can’t change it now. For over thirty years I’ve lived each day just trying to see another one. If you’re going to hurt me, or kill me, I can’t stop you, but please God don’t.”

The sound of her slow clapping broke the silence that had fallen for a moment after he finished.

“You’re about thirty years too late, Colonel. How many people didn’t get another day for thirty years because of you? Do you even know? How the hell did you even get out of basic?” She cut him off before he started, “No, don’t answer, I might puke.” She reached down into the bag and pulled out a zipper pack.

“Look, I’m tired of dicking around with you — and don’t go there.” She rifled through the pack and pulled out a syringe. “Are you immune to sodium pent, Colonel? Let’s find out.”

The look he turned on her reminded her of a scared cocker spaniel, and she sighed as she injected him in the arm.

Three test injections later she found an interrogation drug he wasn’t immune to. It was one of the standard ones Fleet Strike had access to.

“Gee, they never did plan to tell you anything really sensitive, did they? Some vital source.”

It took three hours to debrief him. She normally wouldn’t have eaten while working, but she was going to have to dispose of the pizza somehow since none of it would be in the mistress’s stomach and putting any in his stomach wouldn’t match. The delivery was a loose end, but if it ever turned up, she’d be wearing a different face in a different place, anyway. Sometimes, there was just nothing you could do. God, this day sucks.

Finally, she had gotten as much information out of Petane as he had in his brain. As Robertson had said, none of it was of a magnitude that would justify leaving a traitor alive for thirty years, and if nobody in the Fleet Strike establishment had bothered to immunize him against the higher level interrogation drugs, he never would be trusted with anything sensitive enough to be really useful. He wasn’t alert enough to refuse when she offered him one of the plain wine coolers, and drank thirstily from the glass she had found in a cupboard.

Time to clean up the mess. I really think less of Team Hector for going along with this. Another syringe in the pack had a very small amount of a dye that biodegraded quickly but, used skillfully, created very sincere needle tracks.

Unfortunately, it only decayed properly if the subject was still alive, so she had to listen to his whimpering as she stabbed his veins in the appropriate places and released just a tiny spot of the dye. At school, practicing this skill on each other had been less than fun. It had gotten her over a minor nervousness around needles, but the dye did tend to sting a bit.

When she had enough tracks to be convincing, she waited five minutes and retied his feet and hands to each other, rather than the chair. The interrogation drugs were wearing off, but he was still drugged enough to offer little resistance as she maneuvered him over her shoulder and carried him into the bedroom. As always, the weight didn’t present much problem to her upgraded musculature, but the leverage took some managing — particularly as he was not quite dead weight and tended to twitch.

In the bedroom, she did the distasteful but necessary things to set the scene up for the forensics people and gave him his final injection, prepping a second glass with the mistress’s lip marks and drugged wine and leaving them on the nightstand next to the bed. She poured a second plain wine cooler down the drain and had two clean, empty bottles for the kitchen trash.

She was putting the assorted debris — used ties, gag, syringes — away when she had the sudden unexpected need to make a dash for the bathroom. She was violently sick in the toilet, and swore weakly as she cleaned her face with toilet tissue afterwards, making sure every bit of the unwelcome evidence got thoroughly flushed and scrubbing out the toilet afterwards. It would not be out of character for the mistress to have cleaned up a bit for her date, and the cleaning smell would go unremarked even if it was noticed.

Of all the damned times to start catching a stomach flu. I can’t even remember the last time I was sick with something. And I sure as hell am not pregnant, thank God. She stalked into the kitchen and resumed the careful scene clean-up.

“You can stop recording, buckley. Save it as… call it ‘Hector Archive.’ ”

“We’ve got to run for it now, don’t we? Not that it’s any use.”

“No, buckley. I’m just about through here. You can set AI emulation back to level two.”

“But… but… but… oh all right…” It trailed off. The buckley was never as enthusiastic when things were going well.

Home before eleven. Cally looked at her watch and unbuckled it from her wrist. For a solo mission, that part at least wasn’t so bad.

The briefcase with all the incriminating evidence came into the hotel room with her, as per SOP when a crew wasn’t available. She’d carry it in herself when she reported tomorrow and hand it over to the cleaning department. She’d given considerable thought to how to handle any stress with her bosses over her vacation and had decided to brazen it out. She wanted to discuss the priorities that had left a traitor who had caused the death of a whole team of agents alive for a few decades after that act. This should effectively open the conversation.

She took her makeup off slowly, oddly tired this evening. Well, that’s absolutely, finally, unquestionably the last of my personal better dead list. I’d thought Worth was it, but okay, so it was Petane. Yay. Rah. I’ll have to celebrate that sometime. She shook her head to clear it a bit and grabbed a clean teddy to sleep in. Not up for a night on the town? Me? I definitely must be coming down with something. Ah, best just get an early night.

She looked at herself in the mirror as she changed, running a hand through the brown curls. They’d likely be gone by this time tomorrow. Sinda Makepeace was so silver-blond and fair she looked like the stereotypical Swedish ski bunny. It wasn’t often she had a cover with lighter coloring than her own. I’m about to start brooding again. Geez. I must be really tired. To bed.

She grabbed a washcloth without thinking about it and plonked it on the night table, turning off the alarm clock and then the light.

She would have liked to linger in bed in the morning. It had been such a wonderful dream. She would have sworn she had actually tasted one of the delicious conch omelets and even a slice of fresh key lime pie. She had been sitting in Mom’s lap, and Dad had just brought a fresh glass of limeade, tart and cold with ice.

The ice in the drink wasn’t the only thing that was cold. Out of reflex, she reached for the washcloth with one hand as she wrestled herself free of the sodden and clammy sheets. They stank of sour sweat and she stripped off her nightclothes and left them in the floor as she made a beeline for a hot shower to clean up and warm herself. Huh. Must have had a fever break in the night or something. I hate being sick.

After checking out, she got out her phone and called a number, “I need a cab.” She gave the address.

When the cab arrived, she left her suitcase and backpack in the trunk, taking only the briefcase and her purse. The cabby didn’t talk to her until they pulled up to a coin laundry.

“There’s a fire door at the back next to the restroom. Don’t pay any attention to the sign about the alarm. Get in the back of the truck,” he said, touching something on the seat beside himself that might have been a PDA screen.

“Thanks.” She gave him a nice tip and a small smile, even though the meter had obviously not been running.

The single person in the coin laundry didn’t even look up as she walked through and out the back. It was the kind of neighborhood that discouraged curiosity about other people’s business.

In the alley, there was a squat woman in gray coveralls holding the back of the truck open. She didn’t speak to Cally, just waited as she got in and closed the door behind her. Inside, the boxes of what appeared to be housewares were tightly lashed down to keep them from slipping around, and Cally blessed whoever had loaded the truck for their thoughtfulness. She found the least uncomfortable place to wedge herself for the ride and sat down.

It was well-known among upper level operatives that the Bane Sidhe had a base, a sort of mini Sub-Urb of their own, in the vicinity of Chicago. In this case, “in the vicinity” meaning within a two hour drive, give or take. Today it took longer, and she was sore and heartily tired of bouncing around in the unpadded back of the truck by the time the truck slowed, turned, and did the starting, stopping, standing, and maneuvering that indicated arrival at the base.

By the time the door opened, she was more than ready to check in and go find a deep, hot bath for a couple of hours. Her first stop was in a little office immediately off of the underground parking lot. She handed the briefcase and her car keys to a man of indeterminate age with lead gray hair and a very large nose.

“Marty, the case and contents need the full treatment.” She grabbed a stylus and scribbled an address, as well as car make, model, and tag number, on the pad on the counter. “The car is also dirty, and needs pickup today — it’s a hotel lot. You can clean the clothes in the trash bag in the suitcase, but I’d really like the rest of the clothes and the backpack and contents back. How’s Mary?”

“Fine, fine. What have you been up to? Didn’t know you were in the field.”

“Target of opportunity. Wasn’t able to do a full set up. Sorry about that. I know these improv jobs are harder. How are Sue and Cary?”

“She graduated this spring. Didn’t pick my field or her mom’s. Don’t know what that girl sees in machines, but they tell me she’s an artist. And I got a letter from my junior reprobate this week. Seems he’s finding out that minding the nuns is more than just a good idea.”

Cally returned his wicked grin.

“That all?” he asked, and as she nodded, he patted her hand gently. “Got you covered, sweetheart. Go take a load off and try to forget about it.”

She logged herself in to one of the temporary suites and went down to grab that bath. By the time she got out, her trunk of personal effects would have been wheeled up and installed in the room. She left the “Do Not Unpack” sign on the dresser and went in to run her bath. The organization understood how transient and rootless field operatives could feel and believed firmly in reducing the disorientation by maintaining an assortment of personal effects on site. Maintaining entire apartments for operatives who might never return from a mission was cost prohibitive, and additionally tended to emphasize losses in peoples’ minds, so the personal gear was maintained in the modern equivalent of steamer trunks which were delivered to the operative’s room when he or she checked in on base, and wheeled back into storage when he or she left.

Cally appreciated having her own clothes and her own things when she was on base, but she preferred unpacking them herself or not at all rather than having them repeatedly handled by strangers, much less by friends or acquaintances.

She paid for lunch to be sent up. If she went to the cafeteria she would no doubt run into people she knew and would have to talk to. She would, in fact, have to be Cally O’Neal, and she wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Which just went to show she was coming down with something and ought to stop by the medic’s office just in case. Except that she didn’t really feel like doing that. She decided to see if a long, hot bath, a good workout, and an early night would put her right. No sense in bothering a doctor for something as trivial as a touch of stomach upset and, well, the night sweats must have been a touch of fever. And she was neither queasy nor feverish now, just a little draggy.

In the bathroom, she added some bath salts from a jar under the counter to her bath. Scentless, of course, since housekeeping never knew if the operative in the room would be male or female, but still good for a soak. Real decadence would have to wait for the arrival of her own things.

The brown contacts came out and her own cornflower blue eyes stared back at her as she pinned her hair on top of her head, looking at a curl ruefully. She wasn’t about to add a chemical relaxant, bleach, and dye on top of a perm and dye job. She’d be walking around for the next few days looking like she had a head full of broom straw. It would just have to wait until they did her new cover on the slab.

She grabbed the large white terry bathrobe from the rack outside the bathroom and hung it on the inside of the door, leaving her clothes where they fell as she stripped off and lowered herself into the hot water up to her chin.

Levon Martin looked into the mirror at his darkened skin tone and dark contacts, running his hands over the patterns shaved into his hair and shrugged. He licked his very thin lips and pulled out some lip balm. With the weather warmed up, that should quit being a problem soon. He’d be happy to get back into his own skin, but this afternoon’s urban reconnaissance had required a different social face. This was not going to be a fun interview. He straightened his golf shirt and ensured it was neatly tucked into his slacks before leaving his room, listening to the electronic lock click faintly behind him as he entered the halls of the Chicago base. The transit elevator at the end of the hall didn’t take long to route him to the administrative octant of the Urb, where he had a short walk down the hall to enter an outer office.

The human receptionist behind the desk was there not because he was necessary to keep track of appointments or forms, although he did both, but because his superior’s time was valuable and because he had displayed a talent for guarding that time from unnecessary interruptions.

“Martin, Team Hector. I’m early.”

“You are. Hang on just a second.” The man got up and poked his head around the door, murmuring softly for a moment to the person on the other side. It would have been audible to Martin’s upgraded hearing if he had chosen to pay close attention. Under the circumstances, he did not.

“You can go in,” he said. “You’re on the heels of another interruption, and we might as well combine them.”

Martin walked into the inner office and sat down, waiting for the young-looking man rather eccentrically still wearing a clerical collar to look up from whatever was being displayed by his AID. The hologram was blurred from this side of the desk.

Father Nathan O’Reilly had had the credibility of his improbable good health, given his officially unrejuvenated state, wear thin twenty years before and had come inside to exercise his considerable organizational talents in the Earthside bureaucracy that had inevitably developed after the Bane Sidhe had resumed contact with their human allies.

Taking him inside had required very special planning and no little risk. Catholic priests didn’t exactly have a high rate of violent death, and for various reasons at the time it had been necessary that he actually be seen by several people to be very sincerely dead. The drug used was a resource-intensive collaboration between the Indowy and Crabs, and was a timed-release variant of Hiberzine that showed none of that drug’s surface symptoms. The main problems with it was that the dosage was tricky, requiring rather exact knowledge of the patient’s physical stats, and the hibernatory effectiveness was degraded by the same changes that reduced the visible symptoms. If the dosage was off by even a tiny amount, or the antidote was not administered within twelve hours, the simulated death tended to become very real in ways even the slab couldn’t fix.

The drug was so secret it didn’t even have a name, customarily being packaged in a water-insoluble crunch capsule to be bitten and swallowed by the willing target of an extraction. The time delay served two purposes. One was allowing time for the patient’s stomach acid to fully dissolve the capsule material. The other was preventing any possibility that some sharp-eyed observer would see the patient take the pill and immediately fall over “dead.”

Still, the ten percent risk of not waking up at all had required a great deal of trust on his part, and it wasn’t exactly a comfortable drug. All things considered, he was rather glad he’d never have to take it again.

Decentralized as the Bane Sidhe inherently were, a functioning planetary cell system required some central organization. Chicago Base was it. The priest had taken command of it fresh after its commissioning, its very discreet construction having been a ten year project that had required… encouraging… the Himmit with a number of exceptionally good story opportunities.

“Display off,” he told his AID. “So, Levon, what’s on your mind?”

“One of my agents turned up dead of a heart attack this morning,” he began.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Was he known to be ill?”

“No, the reverse. He was found dead in his mistress’s bed. Consensus from preliminary investigation was that the heart attack was induced by a drug overdose, consistent with the agent’s drug problem.”

“Were we aware of such a problem?”

“No, sir. In fact, apparently he had also provided recreational drugs to the mistress, not a known user. She doesn’t remember a thing. Consensus from the investigators is that he wished to perform acts upon the mistress’s body in which she would be reluctant to engage in a fully conscious state, but that the drugs he took to enhance his own pleasure and performance killed him by causing a heart attack before he could complete such acts.”

“You don’t believe any of this.” It was not a question. The father made beckoning motions with both hands.

“Would it interest you to know that the dead druggie was one Colonel Charles Petane and that Miss O’Neal checked in today a bit after eleven, complete with a bag for the cleaning department?”

The priest paused for a moment and replied gravely, “Members of the clergy of Holy Mother Church do not use foul language.”

“I’m aware of that, Father.”

“I wasn’t reminding you. Spill it. What else do you have?”

“A person matching the description Miss O’Neal was wearing when she came in checked out of a hotel in Chicago this morning. The same hotel where Miss O’Neal’s cab picked her up on her way to report in. The same hotel where she requested the cleaning department retrieve and clean a car and assorted personal effects. The name on the hotel register, by the way, was Marilyn Grant. Miss Grant had been a guest of the hotel since Friday evening. I won’t know until a discrete opportunity presents itself, but I would expect that if I check trees and other likely spots in the vicinity of the late colonel’s house and his mistress’s apartment that I will find traces of the adhesive we customarily use to affix temporary surveillance cameras.”

“Don’t. If she got by with it, I don’t want to arouse any suspicions by getting caught doing belated cleaning.” He called up the Petane file on his AID and reviewed it briefly. “If they do turn up foul play, Petane was sufficiently small fry that an investigation won’t lead anywhere. We’ll just hope it stays on the books as an overdose rather than an unsolved murder.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes for a minute. “I doubt she has any idea of the havoc this is likely to wreak with our Indowy friends.”

He stood and walked around the desk, shaking the operative’s hand as the younger man rose. “Thanks, Levon. I’ll take it from here.”

As he left the office, clearly having been dismissed, the operative heard his boss issuing terse instructions to the AID.

“Get Mike O’Neal, Sr., here as soon as possible, I don’t care if you have to dispatch a shuttle just for him to do it. Get the rest of Team Isaac in with him if you can, but don’t hold up his departure more than two hours maximum for their sakes.”