State of War

7

Toni had planned to go to the supermarket to pick up a few things before Alex got home from work. It was almost dark and she wanted to get back before he did, so she was in a hurry to get going — until she opened the front door and saw the mob of reporters on her front walk.

Well, okay, it wasn’t really a mob. There were maybe seven or eight reporters, but it sure looked like more. As soon as she opened the door, they started yelling at her, creating a babble that was loud and only partially understandable:

“Mrs. Michaels, Mrs. Michaels! Is it true you were one of the agents who killed workers on the Bon Chance?”

“Mrs. Michaels — how you do feel about your husband being responsible for the deaths of those innocent men?”

“—true that you are a martial arts expert who has killed several people with knives or your bare hands—?”

“—fair to the taxpayers…?”

Guru came to the door behind her. She looked out at the men and women charging up the walk. She stepped past Toni to face the onrush of reporters. “The baby is sleeping,” she said. “You must leave.”

The first woman to reach Guru, a television reporter, shoved a microphone into her face. “Who are you, ma’am?” she demanded to know. “What do you know about this?”

Pushing the wireless mike into Guru’s face was perhaps not the wisest thing the woman had ever done.

Guru caught the outthrust instrument, twisted, and removed it from the reporter’s grip. Adding her other hand, the eighty-five-year-old woman gripped the thing securely and snapped it in half. Then she dropped the pieces.

The clatter of the broken sound gear falling upon the walk was quite loud.

“You must be quiet,” she said. “The baby is asleep.”

Apparently none of the reporters had ever before seen an old granny break an expensive, hard plastic and steel microphone as if it were a bread stick. They all stopped talking. They looked like a herd of grazing deer suddenly caught in headlights.

Toni grinned.

Guru shooed them with her hands. “Go, go.” She took a step forward.

The reporters nearly fell all over themselves backing away.

Guru turned around, gave Toni the smallest of smiles, and went back into the house.

The woman reporter said, “I’m going to send you a bill for that, lady! You can’t just destroy equipment like that!”

Toni said, very softly, “Who are you going to send it to?” Then she turned and went inside. She wasn’t going to the market now, not and leave Guru and the baby alone with these jackals outside.

When Michaels got home, he saw the gaggle of reporters on the walk out front. Son of a bitch. This wasn’t right. If they wanted to come to HQ and interview him, that was fine, but no way should they be coming to his house!

He pulled the company car into the driveway and hit the remote for the garage. Normally, he left the car parked on the street, to keep the garage empty for silat practice, but he didn’t want to wade through this crowd.

A couple of them moved into the driveway to block his path.

He rolled down the window, stuck his head out. “Move out of the way, please.”

The reporters descended on the car like flies on honey.

“Commander Michaels! Would you comment on the lawsuit against you?”

“—Commander, was it really necessary to shoot those men—?”

“—Commander, why did you send your wife on such a dangerous mission—?”

He tried to inch the car forward, but the pack of reporters stayed with him, like hyenas on a wounded impala. The ones in front wouldn’t get out of the way.

He honked the horn.

He stuck his head out again and glared at the two in front of his car. “Listen, I am going to drive into my garage. It would be a good idea for you to move. I wouldn’t want anybody to get hurt.” He smiled, the expression as fake as a three-dollar-bill.

The pair, both men, both with cameras, stayed where they were.

To hell with you, he thought. He dropped the smile, pulled his head back into the car, took his foot off the brake and let the car idle forward.

They didn’t move until the car was almost touching them, but finally, they did.

He pulled into the garage and hit the remote to shut the door. None of them followed him inside, which was good, because he would have been hard pressed not to toss them out physically.

Once the garage door was closed, he got out of the car. Tommy had told him he’d be seeing reporters, and that whatever he did he was not to let them provoke him. Be polite, don’t say anything except, “No comment,” smile, nod, wave, and get away from them. They were like mosquitoes, Tommy had said. They will bite you and suck your blood, and if you swat one, another will quickly take its place. Better to leave than stand there squashing them.

Toni met him at the door.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he said, waving at the garage door.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. She stood up on her toes and kissed him. “Other than that, how was your day?”

He grinned.

The grin didn’t last, though. In the living room Guru sat watching the evening news. He waved at her, and she pointed at the TV.

Michaels looked over and saw himself on the screen. He stopped.

The view was from one of the cameras that had been blocking the driveway, and a tight close-up of his face showed a flash of anger, then a smile that looked more like a leer. “Move,” he said, as he pulled his head back into the car and started forward.

They cut out the rest of what he’d said — the “It would be a good idea,” and “I wouldn’t want anybody to get hurt.” A different angle, from another camera, cut in, showed the car heading toward the cameramen in front of the car. They made it look as if he was trying to run them down.

His virgil cheeped. It was Tommy Bender.

“What are you doing, Alex? I’m watching you on the news trying to run over Channel Nine’s and Channel Four’s cameramen. Why is that?”

“Tommy, it isn’t what it looks like.”

“It never is. And remember I told you so.”

Corinna Skye leaned back in her chair and smiled. “That may be the best meal I have ever eaten,” she said.

She wore a blue silk blouse with a matching bow at her throat, both of which went with her blue eyes, and a dark maroon pleated silk skirt that stopped just above her knees. He guessed the shoes were Gucci pumps, the leather complimenting the rest of her outfit. Very classy.

Ames smiled at her. “Thank you. I can do better. Ideally, I should have prepared the sauce the day before yesterday to let it age properly. Then it would have been really good.”

“I can’t believe it could have possibly tasted any better.”

“Next time, we’ll try something different. You like moose?”

“Chocolate?”

“Not mousse, moose, like with antlers, from the forest.”

“You’d cook Bullwinkle?”

He laughed. “You know that old TV series? It’s one of my favorites.”

She said, “Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!” in a very good imitation of the cartoon character.

He said, “Again? That trick never works!” in as close an imitation to Rocky the Flying Squirrel as he could manage.

They both laughed.

“Shall we adjourn to the living room for after-dinner wine?”

She followed him into the room. He poured her a glass of the wine he’d selected, let her appreciate it to him, then poured his own glass. He directed her to the form-chair, while he sat on the leather couch.

The chair hummed and fitted itself to her exquisite contours. She smiled. “Ah. I’ve never tried one of these. Very comfortable.”

He shrugged. “If it isn’t comfortable, what’s the point?”

They sipped their wine for a moment. Then he said, “Well, much as I hate to bring up business, I wouldn’t want you to think I invited you here on false pretenses.”

“Heaven forbid,” she said.

“So, how goes the war on the entrenched bureaucracy?”

She put her glass down. “Better than I expected. We’ve got a couple of unexpected senators who have climbed on board the issue, and believe me, I had nothing to do with it. Also, the unofficial word is that the Supreme Court will be ruling on TransMetro Insurance versus the State of New Mexico next week, and there’s a strong rumor that they will rule for TransMetro.”

He knew this, of course. The decision concerned some minor litigation about whether or not the New Mexico regulatory agency could force the Swiss company that sold policies exclusively via the Internet to obey certain arcane state laws. By all rights, of course, the agency should be able to, but there was an oddball section of Internet laws that might prevent that. If so, there would be a precedent set that, while it wouldn’t seem relevant to most observers, would benefit CyberNation down the line. Ames thought of it as part of a basement wall: unseen, but a part of the foundation that needed to be in place.

“Good,” he said. “A little more wine?”

“I’d love some.”

He smiled. Things were going along very nicely here. He wouldn’t make a move on her tonight. Nor the next time they were together, and maybe not even the third time. Like a fine sauce, some things should not be rushed, not if they were to be enjoyed to the fullest.

And he was certainly going to enjoy Corinna Skye to the fullest. Like everything else he had ever wanted, it was only a matter of “when,” not “if.”