The Echelon Vendetta (30 page)

“This laptop is connected to a mixed-receptor array on the cliff face of that peak we saw when we came in. The array gives us a very wide field of coverage, including the entire house and about three hundred yards of perimeter. Sensors all over the terrain, cabled to the array and hardwired to this laptop through this DSL connection. Hackproof program. Gear shielded from EMP and jamming. Motion, infrared, thermal. Carbon dioxide. And night video. Right now we’re looking at a bear and two cubs. They’re moving down the hill toward the stream, maybe a hundred yards to our north. This beeper lets me know when the system sees something more manlike.”

“A bear is a manlike object. How does it tell the difference?”

“Bears stink. Men don’t.”

“You never bunked up with Al Runciman.”

“Remind me not to. The house itself is fully awake, in the sense that a central computer monitors every window, all the doors, even the roof. Servo-assist cameras. Relax, Willard. Have a scotch.”

“Just a beer, if you got it.”

Dalton popped a Lone Star for Fremont, poured himself three fingers of twenty-year-old Laphroaig, dropped two cubes into the heavy crystal glass, and handed Fremont his beer. They crossed the fieldstone floor and dropped with heavy sighs into opposite couches on either side of a big slice of lacquered redwood that served as the coffee table.

Dalton lifted his glass in a weary toast, Fremont replied in kind

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with a nod of his grizzled head, and as they drank the ghost of Porter Naumann flicked into being, sprawled, boneless, at his languorous ease, still in his green pajamas, on the third couch of the square.

Dalton dropped his glass, spilling the contents all over himself.

“What’s the matter?” barked Fremont, sitting upright.

Dalton sent Naumann a vicious look—which Naumann returned with a jaunty salute—while he mopped at his wet crotch, cursing.

“Just a twitch. Sorry.”

“Man,” said Fremont, “you jumped a yard there.”

“It was nothing,” said Dalton, getting up and going back to the cabinet to pour himself another scotch. Naumann had been gone for so long that he had begun to believe that he was fully recovered. Now he was back, and Dalton began to believe instead that he was going to have this problem for the rest of his life, a recurring visible delusion that he’d have to work around each and every day, like a man with Parkinson’s or the effects of a crippling stroke.

“Pour me one too,” said Naumann. “I’m dying over here.”

“Go away,” snapped Dalton, without thinking, near panic.

“Say what?” said Fremont, in an injured tone.

“Not you.”

“Who, then?” said Fremont, staring around the room.

“Him,” he said, nodding in the direction of Naumann’s ghost. Fremont squinted at the empty couch and then looked back at Dalton with new eyes.

“Who’s ...him?”

Dalton finished building his scotch in silence, poured a second one precisely the same, walked over to Naumann, and set it down in front of him with a hard glare. Fremont watched this entire exercise in silence, and sat back in his chair only when Dalton was sitting down across from him.

No one spoke for a while as the fire grew in strength, filling the

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low masculine room with dancing shadows and a warm flickering light. Fremont drained his Lone Star and set it down on the redwood slab.

“Micah, are you . . . seeing things?” Dalton nodded once, staring at the untasted scotch in his hands. “What kind of things?” asked Fremont, his voice unnaturally low

and calming, as if soothing a flat-eared horse. “Just drink your beer, Willard.” “Good advice, Willard,” said Naumann. “You’re not here,” said Micah, to Naumann. “I know that.” Fremont sighed theatrically, got up and walked over to the cabi

net, picked out another Lone Star, popped the cap, and came back to stand in front of Dalton.

“You know, I don’t mean to be a weak sister, but you’re sort of freaking me out here, man. I’m kind of depending on you to keep me alive, and right now you’re not looking all that reliable.”

“I’m fine, Willard. Really. I’ve been on another detail for over a week. I haven’t gotten much sleep. We’ll have something to eat, watch a DVD. In the morning, we’ll talk to Stallworth—”

“How’d he like the orchid?” said Naumann, cutting in. “He loved it,” said Dalton, after a long taut silence. “Told you he would.” “Yes, Porter, you did.” “Who’s Porter?” asked Fremont. Dalton just shook his head and sipped at his scotch. “Man. You do sound like you really
are
talking to another guy,”

said Fremont. Dalton looked up at him, and then back at Naumann, who lifted his hands, shrugged, leaned back into the couch, and put his bare feet on the table.

“I guess that’s what it sounds like, Willard.” Fremont sat down. He took a pull at his beer, considering Dalton. “Is this guy, like, dead?”

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“Very dead.” “He was a friend?” “Yes. A good friend.” “That’s rough,” said Fremont. “How’d he die?” “He killed himself—” “Like hell,” put in Naumann. “Don’t believe him, Willard.” “Killed himself ? How?” “Stabbed himself with an Art Deco hat pin, actually.” “Very funny,” said Naumann. “How can a guy kill himself with a
hat pin
?” “Wasn’t easy,” said Dalton, smiling at Naumann. “Took him sev

eral hours. Had to keep jabbing away. Squealed like a girl all the way

through it too.” “You really are an asshole,” said Naumann. “Where did he do this?” “In Cortona, Italy, about a week ago.” “Yeah? Why’d he do that?” “I’m still trying to figure that out.” “Suicide, huh? And this guy, this suicider, he’s here now?” “Yes. Over there. On the couch.” Fremont studied the couch for a time, narrowing his eyes. “Can’t say I see him all that clear. What’s he look like?” “Six two, one-ninety, big build. Pale-blue skin. Used to be

tanned. Now kinda moldy. Good-looking in an advanced-state-of-decomposition-crawling-with-maggots sort of way.”

This wasn’t completely accurate. Naumann was looking reasonably good, for a corpse. As a matter of fact he seemed to have improved quite a bit—he looked almost “fresh”—but the chance to heat Naumann up was just too good to pass up.

“I am
not
crawling with maggots, you lying snake.” “Got on a pair of emerald green pajamas.” “Green pajamas. That what he was wearing when he died?”

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“No. Matter of fact, I don’t know where he got them.”

“In Hell. Shop called Dante’s,” said Naumann. “Near Nel Mezzo del Cammin di Nostra Vita. Tell ’em Virgil sent you.”

“I knew a guy was haunted, once,” said Fremont, in a detached conversational tone. “His name was Milo Tillman, one of our guys, worked out of the Lordsburg division, over there by the Arizona border? Tillman was in the Marines, went to Vietnam, did what was required, Silver Star, Purple Heart twice. On the way home in the Braniff jet, he’s sitting beside this guy, Regular Army, name of Huey Longbourne, got a MAC SOG patch, fruit salad all over his chest, looks like he earned every stitch of it. Huey and Milo took a liking to each other, got themselves a little pissed, talked out some of the uglier bits of the war. They’re getting ready to land, Huey says he’s gotta go to the head. Huey never comes back. They land, go through customs—no sign of Huey. Milo gets the pilot to read him the manifest. The seat next to him was listed empty. No Huey Longbourne on the passenger manifest. But his name was there on another list. The cargo manifest. He’d been killed on a Lurp near Anh Khe the week before. His body was in the hold, along with ten other ex-grunts. After that, Milo saw Huey Longbourne off and on for years, mainly in the evening, or when he was tired. Got reconciled to him, I guess.”

“Does he still see him?” asked Dalton, deeply interested.

“Hard to say. Milo got himself disappeared years back, lost somewhere in the foothills of the Rockies, down in southeastern Colorado. Winter of ninety-seven, I think. A very bad winter. Lost in a storm, we think. Never come back from a field op.”

“You never found him?”

“We looked. Scoured the whole sector around Trinidad, all the way up the Purgatoire to Timpas, up along the Comanche grasslands. Got as far as the Kansas border, but that kind of looking sorta draws the cops and we were trying to keep a lower profile those days. It

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might even be that Milo’s not dead at all. I like to think he just decided it was time to walk away. He might be sitting in a cantina right now, down in Tularosa, talking about the Nam with the ghost of Huey Longbourne. I hope he is. Anyway, my point, Milo was haunted and it never got in the way of his job. So I figure, you got a ghost, you still look like a competent guy. I’m okay with it.”

“Sporting of you, Willard,” said Naumann. “I like this guy.”

“He likes you,” said Dalton. Fremont smiled, waved in the general direction of the empty couch, lifted his beer.

“Here’s to you too.” Turning to Dalton, “Porter?”

“Naumann. Porter Naumann. Porter, meet Willard Fremont.

“Nice to know you, Willard,” said Naumann.

“He says it’s nice to know you.”

Dalton topped up his glass and decided there was no room for ice, a situation he felt he could find it in himself to accept.

“Can I ask it a question?” asked Fremont, looking cagey.

“I’m not an ‘it,’ you wizened old zygote.”

“Porter says, By all means. Feel free. He’d be delighted.”

Fremont stared in Naumann’s general direction, looking myopic and unfocused as he searched for something to fix his eye on.

“Mr. Naumann—”

“Porter,” said Naumann. “Call me Porter.”

“He says you can call him Porter.”

“Okay. Thanks. Porter. My question is, do you ever tell Micah here anything that he doesn’t already know?”

“I’m prepared to bet good money,” said Naumann, grinning wolfishly at Fremont, “that almost
any
topic you could possibly raise with this fine young lad here is a topic about which he knows not one rudimentary iota. And if he
does
know something about it, you can rest assured that what he
thinks
he knows is dead bang wrong.”

“Basically,” put in Dalton, “he’s saying no.”

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“Yeah? Well, that’s kinda significant,” said Fremont, musing.

“Why?”

“Because if he never tells you anything you don’t already know, then he’s probably not a real ghost.”

Naumann seemed to be ignoring the slander. He looked as if he had gone inward and was now wrapped in deep thought. Fremont was looking quite satisfied with himself. The discussion interested him on a professional level; he had never debriefed a dead man before.

“Have you ever met any real ghosts?” Dalton asked Fremont.

“Not while I was sober. But Milo Tillman’s ghost—”

“Huey Longbourne.”

“Yeah. Longbourne used to tell Milo all kinds of things. Told him all about secret MAC SOG operations. Milo checked them out later; they were all true. Things Milo could not have known but Huey could. That’s how you tell you got a real ghost. What you got here—”

Naumann, who had evidently figured out what was bothering him, broke in here, talking right over Fremont’s dire warnings about demons ...warlocks ...Rosicrucians . . . something about white chickens ...rock salt and a moonless night...

“I did so tell you something you didn’t know!” said Naumann, a note of definite triumph in his voice. “I told you that Milan and Gavro were severely injured. Crippled. In a coma. You didn’t know that.”

“Jeez, Porter. I was
there.
I’m the one who did the thing. When I was through I had a pretty good idea they weren’t gonna get up, dust themselves off, and go for lime rickeys.”

“Where’s Lime Ricky’s?” asked Fremont.

“Willard, how about you stay out of this for a second? Porter, you can’t tell me anything I don’t know and you can’t remember

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what happened to you in Cortona because
I
don’t know. If I really knew, then you’d remember it. Don’t you get it, Porter? You’re not real. You’re not here. If I can get you to see the truth of it, then you’ll go away, like those people in
A Beautiful Mind.
Once the guy figured out they couldn’t be real—the little girl never got any older— his delusions went away.”

Fremont was shaking his head. “Actually, they didn’t—”

“Willard,” said Dalton, rounding on him, “stay out of this.”

“We’ve been over this ground before, Micah.”

“Then how come you never tell me anything I don’t know?”

“My point exactly,” said Fremont.

“Tell you the truth, I think it’s against the rules.”

“Rules? What rules?”

“Rules of Engagement. I break them, I can’t stay.”

“Why not?”

“I start to affect outcomes. Tamper with destiny. I’m not qualified to do destiny.”

“Isn’t it tampering with my destiny to tell me to go see Laura? Isn’t it ‘affecting outcomes’ to say I only have three weeks to live?”

“You’ve only got three weeks to live?” asked Fremont, in an anguished bleat.

“No,” said Naumann, primly. “That’s more your dire warning from beyond the grave. Apparently we do that all the time. They tell me nobody ever listens.”

Fremont was now quite emotionally involved, since if Micah Dalton was going to be dead in three weeks, his being dead was going to dramatically reduce his effectiveness as a bodyguard for one Willard Fremont, the Dearly Beloved. He uttered another plaintive bleat. “Is he really saying you’re gonna
die
in three weeks?”

“Actually,” said Naumann, looking at his empty wrist and then swearing softly, “that was a week ago. He’s only got two weeks left.”

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