Adrenaline

95

The cabin was bare but functional. Me, Lucy and the pilot and copilot. They did not ask questions about our guest in chains.

“They’ve been told that she’s a prisoner of the CIA,” Kenneth said. “I thought you would appreciate the irony.”

“Thank you.”

Lucy ate the sandwich that I gave her and drank from a bottle of water.

The plane left England behind, soaring out over the dark heavy steel of the Atlantic.

“I have a question for you. How exactly does the chip get the DNA?”

“I could bore you with the detailed science, but you put a hair or a blood sample on the chip and it encodes the bullets with the target’s DNA. Then the bullet’s like a guided missile.”

“But he shot at you and missed.”

“He didn’t have my DNA on the chip. It acts as a normal gun without the DNA enhancement.”

“Does he have a chip with your DNA?”

She started to answer and then fell silent.

“He could and you don’t know.”

“If he’s smart he does. Edward won’t let anyone betray him.”

“I’ve been thinking hard about why you turned traitor, trying to see how someone like Edward, a psychopath, could lure you away from your life with me.”

“Well, when you were investigating these criminal networks, I used to see the numbers you crunched. You look at these crime rings, you see how much money they make. Billions and billions. Twenty percent of the world’s economy comes from illicit goods now. It’s easy money. You just need the right mix of skills. Smugglers, hit men, hackers. The right network. And then…” She looked at me coolly. “I’m a businessperson. They offered me some money. I knew I could clean it through Company accounts and make it vanish. At least, I thought I could. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone, giving them the files.”

“Tell me about Novem Soles.”

“I have a contact. He got me my money, but I’ve never met him.” She finished her sandwich. “I don’t even know how they got their name. But I found an old legend about nine suns on the Internet. Chinese. It says that there were once ten suns, but they wouldn’t come out just one at a time during the day. All ten would come and their heat and power would incinerate the world.” Her voice had grown very soft. “The emperor asked the father of the ten suns, Di Jun, to ask the suns to appear just one at a time, so the earth would not be remade in heat and flame. But the suns refused. So Di Jun sent an archer named Yi, with a magical bow and arrow, to frighten the suns, to make them obey. Instead Yi shot nine of them, so only one sun would remain.” She risked a smile. “Because the nine suns, returning, would destroy the world, annihilate whoever tried to tame them. I don’t even know if that story has anything to do with the Nine Suns, or why they use a Latin name if it’s based on a Chinese legend.” She smiled but there was no joy in it. “Nine people who could remake the world, that’s how they think of themselves.”

“Is Edward one of the nine? Or is he a flunky?”

“I don’t know.”

“These fifty people. What’s special about them?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“That’s a lie.”

“No, it’s not.” Lucy drew her knees up to her chin. She peered at me above them. “When you asked me to marry you, I almost said no. Not because I didn’t want to marry you. I did. But I felt like you wouldn’t be enough. I wanted a lot from life. I wanted money. I wanted respect. I wanted to work hard for ten years and then have enough to live on. Not work my fingers to the bone clawing up some male-run bureaucracy, not putting my life in danger for a bunch of ideals.” She slid her legs out in front of her and for a moment we were back in London, drinking lager in our apartment, talking about our future. “I knew you didn’t care about that. And for a time I thought I could live without the money. I couldn’t.”

I didn’t say anything. She was quiet for nearly forty minutes and I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she said, “I think I will tell you a little bit about who I work for.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“Because do you think the Company’s really going to welcome you back? Even if you help them? Maybe they’ll give you a pardon. Maybe. But they’ll never, ever, let you work for them again. They won’t trust you. They won’t think you can follow orders. Orders trump all.”

“Are you telling me this to offer me a job?”

She stretched out a leg. “Consider it a lifeline. I think the Company will simply kill both of us when they’re done.”

“No.”

“Oh, not them officially. But there are rogue groups running inside.”

I looked hard at her. Could I have been so wrong for so long? The thought was a fist in my chest, in my brain. “I wasn’t enough for you. Marrying me wasn’t enough,” I said.

“Marrying you was… Marrying you was the right thing to do. I loved you. It was an act of optimism.”

“I don’t believe you loved me.”

She raised an arm, slid up the sleeve, and I saw a trio of round, brutal burns on her upper arm. “That was the price of making that phone call that got you out of the office. Edward thought I’d betrayed them, leaving you alive. A dead patsy is more valuable than a live one who can deny and possibly disprove the frame.”

“But you did frame me.”

“You were alive. I knew they might let you go, that there was a chance. Better prison than a grave.”

“Why wasn’t I enough? Wasn’t I a good husband?”

“You cannot possibly care about my opinion.”

I started to answer and she raised a hand. “No, you don’t care about me. I see through all this talk. This is about the baby.” She smiled and then the smile went away. “My trump card.”

“Don’t talk about Daniel that way.”

“I know. He’s a person. Who grew inside me for nine months.” She wiped a hand against her lip. “When we found out I was pregnant, do you remember…” It was a sign of her psychosis, I thought, that she even had to ask.

“I remember.” It had been right after dinner; she’d taken the test without telling me of her suspicions. And brought me the test, with its little affirmative plus, and I’d whooped and hollered and she’d worn a stunned smile on her face.

“Well, I thought, that’s that. I won’t work for Novem Soles any-more. I will walk away. I will cover my tracks and I will stop and no one will ever know that I ever sold bits and pieces of information. I will have this baby and I will love Sam and that will be my real life.” She rubbed at her lip and she dropped her gaze from mine. “But they don’t let you walk away. You don’t submit a letter of resignation. They told me they would kill you.”

I closed my eyes and felt a corner of my heart die. I could never know the truth of anything Lucy said. She had saved me in London; but why, I could never know. Maybe even she didn’t know. Love? Guilt? A more selfish reason, to use me in the future? It didn’t matter. She lied like other people breathed, so that when she told the truth you had no way to recognize it.

I said nothing.

“So. My choices were let you die and then be faced with a life I didn’t want, with a child, or to keep working for them and figure out a way to cut loose and to set you free.”

“You could have come and told us that you were in trouble. Cooperated with us. You’ve used me, you’ve used our kid.”

“I couldn’t come back after the bomb. I couldn’t do prison.”

“There are worse things than prison.”

“Is that a threat? You won’t hurt me.” A half smile played on her face. “You won’t. You’re the good guy. I’m the mother of your child.”

“Where did you have the baby?” I said. “You owe me this, Lucy. Tell me.”

“I owe you nothing. I saved your life. We’re square.”

“There is a Company airfield in Maine, near Damariscotta. If I tell the pilots to land there, they will.”

“I thought we were going to New York.”

“No. I think I should give you back to the Company.”

“Sam, we had a deal. You stop Edward, I walk.”

“But you don’t know where he is, you say. I’ll bet you’ll tell the Company. I bet they’ll make you talk.”

“But the guns-”

“My son takes precedence. Maybe these people haven’t even fixed their targets yet. Maybe the fifty people are just to see if they can encode a chip; they may not be targets at all, just DNA samples that they stole somehow.” I crossed my arms. “I can’t wait to see what Howell does when he gets his hands on you. Oh, I was just the warm-up, sweetheart. You’re the main course. You made him look very bad. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat screwed.”

“He’ll kill you, too.”

“No, I’ll get forgiven. He’ll say he authorized me in secret or some bull. He’ll be clean. He’ll have his traitor in his pocket.”

“The Company won’t let you land at their airfield,” she said.

I stood up. “I can be talking with Howell in five minutes. I’ll have clearance.”

“You weren’t always so stubborn.”

“Where did you have the baby? Tell me and we’ll keep going on to New York.”

She decided to believe me. “Strasbourg. A private clinic called Les Saintes. On the tenth of January. He was given the name of Julien Daniel Besson.”

“Who took him?”

“A woman.” I’d been told the broker was a woman.

“Who does Daniel look like?”

“Babies all look like Winston Churchill at first. But he has your eyes, Sam.”

“What is this baby broker’s name?”

“Edward didn’t tell me. I don’t know. That’s how they kept me in their pocket. It was insurance.”

“And they gave you money for my son?”

“Our-”

“You just lost the right to call him yours, Lucy. Don’t you ever call him yours again.”

“No, don’t say that.”

“You let them take him to sell him. Jesus.”

She stared at me and she knew the deal between us was dead, that I was never going to let her go without having my child.

“What’s going to happen to me?” she said.

“You tell me everything and then you tell the Company everything. I want my name cleared.”

“Your name is never, ever, going to be cleared. Sam, there will always be someone in power who believes you knew. That maybe you didn’t do anything wrong, but you knew what I was doing and you kept your mouth shut. Either hoping that I would stop, or I would never be caught. You’re a good husband. That made you a bad agent.”

“Then I’ll focus on being good at my job. Where is Edward delivering the gun chips? Where in New York? You cooperate with me and I’ll be your advocate with the Company.”

She considered this and for several long seconds there was only the whine of the engines. “At the new Yankee Stadium. Since Edward tried to kill me I’m assuming he thought that you were going to capture me and he wanted the plan protected. He won’t change it if he thinks I’m dead.”

“What time is this meeting?”

“At eight tonight. As the game starts. The season’s just begun.”

I stared at her. I thought of our last morning together, our lives so normal, our lives such a lie that it clenched the air in my lungs.

She said, very softly: “Do you remember once that I asked you, if we knew a day was our final day together, what you would say to me?”

I remembered. “I’d say anything but good-bye. I never wanted to say good-bye to you.”

She looked at me and I couldn’t tell if there were tears in her eyes or if it was the dim light of the cabin. “I think I’ll say my good-byes now, Sam.”