The Unseen (20 page)

“I think I can find that.”

Lucas let Saul's obvious sarcasm slip by without comment as he closed the TracFone and powered it down.

That's when he heard a sound he recognized: low notes on a guitar, floating through the air toward him, carried through the building from somewhere outside.

He stood and walked out the doors, pausing to get his bearings at the top of the steps. Across the street, next to a giant statue and spraying fountain, he saw a hunched figure on a box.

He crossed the street and stood in front of the man again, waiting for a pause. The guitar player tilted his head back, holding a long note, then opened his clenched eyes.

“Well now,” he said as he segued into a new tune, his hand sliding up and down the guitar neck. “Seems to me you spend way too much of your time in train stations.”

Lucas smiled. “You too.”

“I got somethin' special for you,” the guitar player said, and he slid into the tune without waiting, strumming the opening bars as his eyes closed again. After the first twelve-bar progression, he began to sing.

Got those crumblin' down blues, baby
Got me some crumblin' down blues
Got those crumblin' down blues so bad
Feel 'em clear down in my shoes
Did me some dancin' with the devil
Said he'd have to take his dues
Now I'm digging with that shovel
Cuz I got them crumblin' down blues

The guitarist did a quick flourish and finished the song, then opened his twinkling eyes and stared at Lucas again.

Lucas threw some money in the guitar case. “Keep playing that guitar,” he said and turned around. As he walked away, he heard the answer:

“Keep digging with that shovel.”

SEVENTEEN

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, HE SAT ON A BENCH ABOUT TWENTY YARDS FROM the base of the Washington Monument. Out here, with no nearby tree cover, the wind whipped across the ground, making the flags surrounding the base of the giant pillar flutter. Lucas tilted his head back, leaning against the bench and enjoying the sun beating down from a blue sky above. He closed his eyes, listened to the breeze, the nearby traffic, the chatter of tourists mingling softly.

“This seat taken?” It was Saul's voice, right next to him.

Lucas smiled, keeping his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Best to play this cool. “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Free country, last time I checked.”

He felt Saul settling onto the bench next to him.

“Don't know where you've been checking,” Saul's voice answered. “All the stuff I've been reading, people seem to think we're living in a fascist state. Country's taking away all our rights, telling us it's hunting for terrorists.”

Lucas smiled. “Are we?”

“Are we what? Taking away rights, or hunting for terrorists?”

Lucas cocked open an eye. “Both, I suppose.”

“Funny, that's what I was just gonna say.” Saul crossed his legs, letting his trench coat fall open, and stared up at the towering monument above them. He put a hand on his bald head and rubbed it for a moment, as if massaging away a headache.

“It's kinda warm out,” Lucas commented. “You really need a trench coat like that?”

Saul had one eye closed as he squinted into the glare of the sky above. “Government spook dress code. No way around it. So what you got for me?”

“I'll have the date and place for the next Creep Club meeting later today.”

“Really? You don't think they'll just go back to the Stranahan?”

“I didn't exactly make a great first impression,” Lucas said.

“They'll want to avoid me. Especially after they find out about . . . last night.”

“What about last night?”

“One of the Creeps—goes by the name of Dilbert—got himself in a bit of trouble.”

Saul smiled, picked a bit of lint off his slacks. “And you just happened to be there to save the day,” he said.

“Something like that.”

Saul nodded. “But not before he got himself knocked out with a baseball bat.”

“So you know about it. Guess I shoulda figured that.”

Saul shrugged. “Yeah, I'm a big baseball fan.”

“He okay?”

Another shrug. “He'll live.”

“What about . . .”

“The woman?”

“Yeah.”

“She's in custody right now. Have to answer a few questions. I'm sure they'll book her on Attempted, but she's got money. She'll make bail.”

“Will she beat the charge?”

“Like I told you, she's got money.” Saul looked at him. “And a tape. She's probably looking good for self-defense, if she plays her cards right.”

“Good.”

“'Course, that's not the only videotape I got on my mind right now.”

Lucas nodded. “Guess you're a newspaper subscriber.”

“For the sports section, mostly. Baseball scores.”

Lucas tilted the sunglasses up on his forehead. “You got any information on that?”

“You first.”

Lucas nodded. “Tried to save the guy. I gave him some footage of his wife and partner planning to kill him.”

“So you played Good Samaritan to a bad egg.”

“You know the old saying. No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Yeah, I've heard that one.”

Lucas smiled. “I think he's trying to smoke me out with this story in the paper. Hope I make contact again, trap myself. Except—”

“Except you don't know Abkin; he's not . . . normal. Be careful.” Saul sucked air between his cheeks, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to him.

Lucas shook his head, waiting for Saul to put a flame to his smoke.

“So,” Saul began, “we're gonna do a little tit for tat. You give me something useful, I give you something useful.”

Lucas nodded, expecting as much. “I thought we were already doing that.”

“Keep thinking that way, then.”

“I'll have something from the next Creep Club meeting.”

“I hope so, with that nice little prize package I put together for you.”

Lucas nodded, not saying anything.

Saul stared at him a few moments, then smiled. “You're not gonna use anything in that package, are you?”

Lucas watched a couple stroll by on the sidewalk, hand in hand.

“Would you, if you were me?” he asked finally.

“No, I don't suppose I would.”

Lucas looked down at the bench they were sitting on, pretended to read something on the slats. “Made in China. Bench sitting here at the Washington Monument, and it's made in China. Seems like everything comes from China these days.” He swung to look at Saul, searching his face for some kind of reaction.

Saul nodded, taking another drag off his cigarette before holding it up. “Yeah, well, smokes are still made in the good old You-Ess-of-A,” he said. “We still got a corner on the cancer market.”

He was good, Lucas had to admit. He didn't rise to the China bait at all.

“So that's it, Humpty? You called this little soirée to tell me you don't really have much now, but you're gonna get me something later?”

Lucas nodded. “Hey, I told you I got a good track on the next meeting. Also because I missed your witty conversation.”

Saul flicked the rest of his cigarette to the concrete without crushing it. The butt rolled away, pushed by the wind. Saul stood, stretching his back as he did. He twisted his neck to the left, and then the right, resulting in a ripple of pops and snaps. “I'll leave you here on your Chinese bench, then,” he said.

AT THE LIVEWIRE CAFé, LUCAS DECIDED IT WAS TIME FOR A FULL MEAL. He looked at his stash; still plenty of money left, but he hated to be draining it like this. He'd need to hit some of his other hidden stashes around the city before long. Better to have a job of some kind, keep adding to his savings.

Except he had a job now. One that didn't pay. One that just might kill him.

Not exactly the benefit package most people crave.

When his sandwich was ready, he took it to an open computer terminal and sat. Immediately, he went to Donavan's geopatch page. First he tried the patch he'd left on Saul's shoe. It hadn't moved in the last twenty-four hours, still at Saul's home address. Either Saul hadn't worn those shoes, or the geopatch had somehow rubbed off inside his home. Or maybe he'd found it.

Next he entered Dilbert's geopatch number. He scanned back over the last several hours of movement. From the hospital, Dilbert had obviously caught a cab or bus to his home—or at least a place where he'd stayed the next ten hours. This morning, however, he'd been busy, spending a few hours at a location down near Fort Stanton Park. Lucas felt certain this was the location of the next Creep Club meeting, and Dilbert was doing some setup. Lucas would find out soon enough.

He smiled, memorizing the two addresses as he took another bite of the sandwich. Soon he would attend his second Creep Club meeting.

EIGHTEEN

THE YOUNG MAN STARES AT THE SECRET VISITOR AND NODS. THE SECRET
visitor seems happy, happier than the young man has ever seen.
“Congratulations,” the secret visitor says, holding out a hand. “Usually,
we don't make such changes with someone so . . . young. You're a first.
A prodigy.”

The young man takes his secret visitor's hand, shakes it. He's been
let out of the metal room many times now, seen the world outside this
steel trap. And yet, oddly enough, he's always felt most comfortable here
inside a place other people would call a prison cell. It's the only thing
that's comfortable and familiar for him, and he needs to hold on to some
thing comfortable and familiar.

Especially on the missions he's been performing for his secret visitor
these last few years. Raven still has no idea. He thinks the young man is his
experiment, his property. He thinks the daily tests, the prodding questions,
the learning sessions, are the young man's only contacts with the outside
world.

But the young man knows better.

The young man has been outside the steel room. He's learned all about
Raven's pheromone research, and he thinks he knows why Raven has failed.
He's shared these ideas with his secret visitor, as well as some new ideas in
genetic research spurred by the new materials, new lessons.

And now, he's agreed to become part of another . . . experiment. To
carry on with Raven's research, as well as to partner with some other
researchers on new opportunities. He's ready, because his secret visitor has
given him the ultimate training these last few years. Combat, strategy, phys
ics, theoretics, and more, all of it implanted with the help of new cocktails
brought to him only by the secret visitor.

And now, the secret visitor has offered him a promotion.

He stands, hearing the chair he was sitting in scrape against the bare
floor. “I'm just wondering . . .” he says.

“Yes,” the visitor prompts. “A good quality, to wonder. Something Raven
hasn't been able to kill, despite his best efforts.”

The young man returns the smile, only now becoming aware of the
constant buzz in his ears. For several years now, the wasps have been his
constant companions, fluttering about his head—drawn, he knows, by the
experiments Raven has performed with wasp pheromones. Raven wanted to
create a Drone Soldier, someone who would follow orders unquestioningly,
much as the drone wasps sacrificed themselves to protect their hives.

He is a failed experiment, he knows. Raven hasn't given up yet, of
course, but it's too late to go much further down that path alone. With the
help of newer technologies such as gene splicing, coupled with the phero
mones, there are possibilities—possibilities the young man has expressed to
his secret visitor—but Raven is the proverbial dinosaur. He has no interest
in using these new techniques.

“Your question,” the secret visitor asks, drawing him from his reverie.

The young man looks the secret visitor in the face. “Where did I come
from? My family—my mother, my father?”

The secret visitor takes his hand, pats it comfortingly. “I am your fam
ily. Your father, your mother.”

“But . . . who am I?”

“Does it matter?” The secret visitor holds out a semi-automatic pistol;
the young man recognizes it instantly as a Taurus 24/7 .45 caliber. He takes
the gun, slides the action to make sure there's a round in the chamber.

“When?” he asks the secret visitor.

“Raven will be here in about ten minutes. You know that as well as I do.
It's time for his project to end. Think what he's done to you, how he's failed
you. And yet, here you are, the youngest agent we've ever promoted—more
than that, the first one actually in our program. We have several teams of
researchers ready to help you; you just need to lead the field team. And the
first thing you need to do is take command. From Raven.”

The young man sits in the chair again, the pistol relaxed and comfortable
in his grip. He's shot several thousand rounds on firing ranges outside
these walls.

The secret visitor moves to the steel door, knocks on it. It opens, and the
secret visitor begins to leave.

“I'll need a name,” the young man says.

The secret visitor stops, turns back toward him again. “What?”

“I've never had a name,” he says. “I've always been . . .” he searches,
realizing no one has ever called him anything. “I've always been here.” He
motions at the room with the pistol in his hand.