The Legend That Was Earth (14 page)

Cade was still too shocked to have moved. Marie killed the phone and stood looking uncertainly around the room, thinking to herself furiously. "Len must have carried something back...." She went around to the other bed and picked up her coat, still lying where Len's had been, and began searching rapidly through the folds and pockets. Cade rose in a daze, looked disbelievingly at the body crumpled on the floor while he picked his way past it, and moved over to see what Marie was doing. She turned back the collar and held the coat up to reveal a black, rectangular object, about the size of a printed-circuit chip, attached underneath. She pulled it off, and making a sign for Cade not to say anything, went over to the closet beside the bathroom, where Cade had hung his jacket. A quick check found an identical device under one of the lapels. How or when Rebecca had put it there, he had no idea. Marie thrust the jacket at him to put on, handed him the automatic, and then as an afterthought went into the bathroom and added several extra ammunition clips that she found in Rebecca's toilet bag. As Cade pocketed them, Marie put her hand to her ear and made the motions of using a phone. Cade took his unit out and showed it to her questioningly. She shook her head and pointed at the bed. He tossed the phone down, and then after taking a last look back at the body, turned to follow Marie out the door.

Marie had keys to a spare car that had been left around the back of the block—a white Toyota. They got in, Marie driving, and left as quickly as was practical without drawing attention. As they turned at a traffic light to enter a ramp signed as leading to I-75 North, three military trucks painted in dark camouflage shades and moving fast passed them, heading the other way. Still numbed, Cade felt the unfamiliar bulge in his jacket pocket. Why had Marie given the gun to him? Obviously, because she was already carrying one, was the only answer to suggest itself.

MARIE DROVE TENSELY, moving the wheel in quick, jerky motions to weave through the evening traffic, constantly watching the mirror. She had switched on the radio and tuned it to a local country-music channel where a deejay was playing phone-in requests. It seemed odd to Cade. Maybe it calmed her nerves. A helicopter appeared from the west and went into a wide circle above the highway. Marie slowed down and eased into the traffic stream to be less conspicuous.

"Was it really such a good idea to leave that phone there?" Cade asked. "I mean, it's traceable to me. They'll know I was there."

Marie smiled humorlessly. "You think they didn't know anyway? Rebecca was ISS, or whatever."

Cade shook his head as if clearing it. Of course. His mind still wasn't functioning. "So what do we do?"

"We'll need to get off the Interstate," Marie answered. "They might seal off this whole area, which means everything on the exit routes will get stopped. They'll have voiceprints on both of us—maybe visuals as well. They'll already have yours in any case."

"Great.... So where are we heading, right now?"

"Just covering as much distance as we can, while we can. I don't really know this area. I only just arrived here.... We have to make contact with local people who are sympathetic."

"How do you propose doing that if you only just arrived in the area?" Cade asked. It didn't exactly sound like the kind of thing someone would advertise.

Marie seemed to be of two minds as to how to answer. "There are ways," was all she said, finally.

The radio deejay prattled on amiably. "Well, that was a good one from way back. And now we have another caller on the line. Hello there? Who are we talking to?"

A man's raspy voice answered. "Hi, Mike. Name's Al. Folks call me Big Al. Been listenin' to that show o' yours for aw... must be close to five months now. Moved out here to Cleveland, a little under twenty miles north o' the Big Nooga. Wouldn't go any farther'n that mind you, 'cause I'm kind of a city boy originally. I've always thought that somebody oughta—"

"Well, it's real nice to hear from you, Al. So what kind of a song can we play for you today?"

"Oh yeah, right. Well, what I'd like to hear is one that I used to—"

Marie switched the radio off. Cade glanced at her questioningly, but she kept her eyes ahead. She passed the next exit, and then left the Interstate at the one after that. Cade noticed that it was signposted Cleveland.

They came to a small town center and crossed to the far side, away from the highway. Marie left the main street and found a minimall with a convenience store, several smaller shops, and a Burger King, and pulled in. Outside the convenience store were a couple of public net-access booths. "Stay here," was all Marie said as she got out of the car. Cade watched her go into one of the booths, sit down, feed a bill into the machine, and peer expectantly at the screen. Police sirens were sounding in the direction of the town center, where they had just passed through. Cade eased back in the seat, stretched his head upward, and exhaled shakily. Only now was his mental machinery beginning to operate anywhere near normally again.

Rebecca had been a plant, sent to infiltrate CounterAction. Very probably, an inflammatory piece denouncing President Ellis and the Washington administration had appeared from opposition sources, but she hadn't authored it. That had been part of a cover story exploiting the opportunity. Presumably, the aim had been to uncover a part of CounterAction's routes and methods for moving people out of the country. Cade could think of nothing further. That was all he had asked Udovich to convey in the message—along with the information that would identify Cade as the sender, to Marie.

He looked back at the booth and saw her speaking into the phone handset, at the same time writing hurriedly on a scrap of paper. Whom could she be talking to if she had only recently arrived in the area herself? Maybe they had a way of inserting coded information in local ads and announcements that would give a number to call if you knew what to look for. His mind drifted back to where it had been previously.

Information to identify Cade
to Marie
!

Could finding CounterAction's conduits have been just another part of the cover story too? Had the real objective all along been to track down Marie? Anything was possible for all he knew. How was Cade supposed to have known what she might have been involved in?

And then a more uncomfortable thought hit him. If Rebecca hadn't been what she said, then what kind of a coincidence would just happen to make her an old college friend of somebody living with a man on the ISS watch list whose former wife was a suspected CounterAction operative? A pretty unlikely one, to put it mildly. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he was forced to conclude that it couldn't happen. So she hadn't been an old college friend of Julia's at all. But if that were true, then Julia had to have been part of the setup as well.

Surely not. After all that time?... It had to be impossible.

Then he remembered the strange way in which Julia had suddenly started asking questions about Marie, whom she had never expressed curiosity over before, and insisting that surely there was some way of contacting her again....

He was still grappling with the implications when Marie came back. She got in and sat looking for a minute at the paper she had written on, as if memorizing it, then folded it and slipped it into a side pocket of her coat. "There's a coffee shop we need to find and wait in for a while," she said. "Someone will get back to us there." Cade merely nodded. If she had wanted him to know more, she would have said. He was completely out of his depth by now.

They drove out of the mall parking area and took a backstreet route, slowing occasionally for Marie to check street names and landmarks until they were on a road leading out of town. They followed for about twenty minutes to another township, smaller this time, standing below tree-covered hills looming into the dusk, which was closing in by now. Marie stopped under an intersection lamp to check her directions again, and then stayed on the main street to a traffic light, where she turned right and stopped two blocks farther on outside a diner billed as "Dean's." It was workaday and nondescript, with a few old cars and pickup trucks drawn up facing the building.

Cade had been thinking over events yet again. He looked at Marie as they were about to get out. "That guy who called in on the radio earlier. Was that some kind of code that the station broadcasts? The exit we turned off at was the name of the town that he said. He made it sound like some old fool just chatting, but he said something about not going any farther than that. Were they stopping the traffic farther on up? Was it something like that?"

Marie gave him a look that said he ought to know better than to ask; but there was a hint of a compliment there too. "A lot of people are getting really tired of what's going on," was the most she would admit before opening her door. On the way in, she stopped and took out a lighter to burn the piece of paper she had written on, stirring the ash into a cigarette sand-tray standing outside the door.

Inside was a counter with stools, a row of booths by the window, and tables and a few more booths at the back. The place was moderately busy with people who looked like local farmers and tradesmen, a group of teenagers, and several casual customers, none of whom gave Marie and Cade more than a glance as they entered. Cade found he had no appetite and ordered just a coffee at the counter. Marie took a sweet cold tea. Cade carried them to an empty corner booth, with nobody in immediate proximity.

They sat for a while toying with their mugs and stirring the contents needlessly, looking around with intermittent glances at each other, each adjusting to the situation in their own way. Despite whatever impressions he might have had earlier, Cade got the feeling that this wasn't exactly what Marie did every day. He wanted to talk, but it seemed pointless to start asking about what was supposed to happen next, which would reveal itself in due course.

Taped music was playing from speakers overhead, which would mask conversation. Finally, he brought up the subject of Julia, which was still nagging at him. He summarized the conversations that had led him to attempt contacting Marie, and his sudden suspicion just now, while Marie was making her call, that Julia must have been part of it. "But how could she have been?" he concluded, turning up his palms. "It's been over a year.... Yet why else would she pretend to have known Rebecca?"

Marie didn't seem to find it so surprising. "Tell me more about her," she invited. "How did you meet?"

Cade did his best to describe Julia and their relationship in a way that was sensitive to Marie's situation, mentioning her former husband who ran night clubs and how her social life as a consequence had clicked with Cade's own agenda. "I met her at a dinner party somewhere. She had a spare ticket to a show that someone had canceled out of and asked me if I wanted to fill in. It developed from there."

"It sounds ideal." Marie regarded him dubiously, as if not quite sure that what he'd said was adequate grounds for what she was thinking. She ran a fingertip around the rim of her mug, then said, finally, "Doesn't it strike you that it could have been just a little
too
ideal?...I mean, a bit over year ago, right? That is, by the time I'd have been marked as a CounterAction active."

Cade shook his head, at the same time smiling as if this had to be some kind of joke. "Surely not. I mean, would they really go so far as to set me up with my own permanent live-in agent?"

This time Marie nodded without hesitation. "Oh sure. It would be routine to put a watch on anyone connected with a marked name like mine. With a person in your position, constantly in touch with influential Hyadeans, they'd want to know everything about your deals and interactions. What better way to do it than that?" Cade could only stare at her aghast. Marie seemed amused. "Are you only starting to notice for the first time, Roland? We're being turned into a Hyadean colony. There might be some friendly ones that you can meet and party with, but the system they work for is ruthless about imposing its own ideas. Their style of security is being introduced into the U.S., and
our own people
—the ones who run the machinery that serves the interests that stand to make big—are collaborating." Cade felt a twinge of discomfort, wondering where that put him. But Marie's phone beeped before he could say anything. She took it out and answered, then produced a pen and another piece of paper and proceeded to jot down more instructions, answering in monosyllables. "Right.... Yes.... No, I've got it. That'll be okay." She closed the phone and put it away. "Time to go," she said to Cade, rising.

They followed a different road a few miles to a disused gas station, which Marie entered, parking on one side of the forecourt. They waited in the darkness for a little under twenty minutes. Then a car drew up on the roadway outside and flashed its lights once. Marie started the engine, turned on the lights, and exited to pull behind it. The car led them about a mile and then pulled off onto an expanse of open ground that seemed, in the moonless night, to be bordered by trees. Marie's phone beeped again. She answered it, listened for several seconds, and announced that she was to leave Cade here for a while. Meanwhile, the car ahead had moved on a distance and doused its lights. Marie got out, closed the door, and disappeared on foot in the same direction. Cade waited for about another fifteen minutes, feeling as if he had been pitched into the middle of one of those movies that he'd never really managed to connect in his mind with reality; or maybe a country that you read about but never thought about long enough to realize might actually exist. If he got out of this in one piece, that was it, he told himself. No more heroics or dabbling with intrigue and subversives. From now on he would... But even as the thought formed, he realized he was no longer so sure. The voice on the phone in the hotel room came back to him.
There are people out there right now for whom it's costing their homes, their families, their lives.
The picture of himself running back to his world of comfort and security didn't sit very well with him either.