Worlds in Chaos (92 page)

“Where do we send it?” Nyarl asked. Marie seemed at a loss.

Cade thought furiously. “Vrel’s got a clean phone. Send it to him. He’ll figure out a way to forward it.”

“You know the number?” Nyarl asked. Cade nodded. Nyarl passed him the phone. The housekeeper came in, jabbering in Spanish; at the same moment, the other house guard appeared at the opposite end of the room. The guard yelled something. They disappeared toward the rear. Screams punctuated by shouted commands were coming from outside, getting nearer.

“
Done!
” Luodine exclaimed. Cade hammered in the number.

A musical tone sounded. “Acceso inválido. Servicio negado,” an impartial voice enunciated.

“
Shit!
” Tevlak’s phone was being blocked too.

“What is it?” Marie asked tensely. Cade didn’t answer. For several seconds he stood glaring from side to side like a trapped animal. Then he threw the phone down and rushed back out of the house. The yard was filled with milling figures. Tevlak was inside the gate, uniformed Terrans restraining him on both sides, a Hyadean calling orders to others moving forward. More Hyadeans had taken up positions around the perimeter. Some genius ordered a burst of warning shots to be fired. The milling and shouting turned into panic. Cade grabbed a fleeing Indian, wide-eyed with fear, by the shirt front.

“
Do you have a phone?
”

“Eh? No comprendo.”

“Jesus. . . . Teléfono. ¿Tiene un teléfono?”

“No.”

Cade pushed him aside. A woman in a straw hat and red wrap was screaming and waving her arms aimlessly. Cade saw a phone attached by a loop to her shoulder purse. He pointed at it. “
I need that phone!
” The woman wasn’t listening. He tore the phone from the purse and rushed back inside. Nyarl ripped the data lead out of the useless phone and jammed it into the one Cade thrust in front of him. Cade tried the number again.

Ri-ing. Ri-ing.

The front door banged open, and a voice shouted, sounding like the guard who had been outside. The second guard reappeared from the back of the house and ran out toward the front.

“
Christ! Christ! Christ! Come on. . . .
”

Ri—
The tone cut, and a voice answered in Hyadean.

“Vrel?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Roland. No time to talk. I’m downloading the file. You have to get it to Chryse somehow.”

“What—”

“
Just do it!
”

An endless pause. Then, “Ready.” Cade nodded at Nyarl. Nyarl barked something at the Hyadean electronics. A crash followed by splintering noises came from the rear of the house, and then the terrified yelling of the housekeeper. More thuds from the front door. Indignant shouts, a couple of shots, then more screaming, getting louder as the door was battered in.

“It’s going through,” Luodine murmured.

Boots hitting the floor at a run; shouts; other doors in the house being thrown open.

An officer in peaked cap and army uniform, brandishing a pistol, appeared from the rear rooms, followed by troopers in helmets and flak jackets. “
Everyone stay where you are! Hands high! Stop that!
” Seconds later, armed Hyadean figures came through from the front, thrusting aside Thryase, who was trying to block the doorway. The leader barked something at Luodine, while another hauled Nyarl away from the table.

“
Sent and deleted!
” Luodine whispered to Cade. He released a sigh of relief. They straightened up to face the intruders.

The Terran officer came forward. “Ms. Marie Cade, otherwise known as Kestrel, I believe. And Mr. Roland Cade. You are under arrest as terrorists wanted for extradition to the United States.” More soldiers appeared from the rest of the house, making negative signs. One of the Hyadeans began checking the recording equipment. Luodine and Thryase were protesting in response to questions from another Hyadean, answering in English for Cade and Marie’s benefit.

“We’re simply doing our jobs. . . . I’m a political observer. She is a media investigator.”

“Tevlak doesn’t know anything about them. They were introduced as visiting professors.”

“No, I don’t know anything about a Teera Vrel. . . . Hyadean officer? What Hyadean officer?”

In the end, it was announced that the four Hyadeans would be detained pending a ruling from a higher authority somewhere. Cade and Marie were taken out to one of the craft that had landed, and boarded with a mixed Terran and Hyadean guard detail. The carrier took off immediately, accompanied by a second flying as escort.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Toddrel learned just after the evening banquet at Derrar Dorvan that the two fugitives had been captured. They were being held in a detention facility at a base used jointly by Hyadean and Peruvian military forces near Cuzco, pending further instructions. Hyadeans had been at the house too, but there seemed to be some confusion over their motives and circumstances. In any case, Hyadean security was dealing with it. Toddrel’s concern at this stage was purely in establishing how much the two Americans had found out, and whom they might have divulged it to before leaving the country. And then silencing them. He skipped the next morning’s session of the meeting and left for Cuzco with Drisson, curious to meet face-to-face this couple who had been the cause of so much trouble. They flew south, with the wall of the Andes standing clear in the early sun, far off to the right.

“I’ve been thinking about those remote-detonatable munitions that Denham was talking about,” Drisson said. “If the Hyadeans are moving troops into the south Altiplano region to protect their action, it means they’ll be stashing a lot more hardware around there. If some of the munitions they bring in are of the new type, and someone could get the remote-access codes . . .” He looked at Toddrel meaningfully.

A lot of damage and confusion could be caused, slowing down if not halting operations completely, which Toddrel and associated interests would appreciate. It didn’t need spelling out. “And the media have already set up MOPAN with Chinese backing as the obvious culprits,” Toddrel completed.

“My thinking, exactly.”

“Hm.” Toddrel decided that it had possibilities. “It could be tough on a few of our Hyadean . . . allies.” He looked at Drisson questioningly.

“Hell, if it’s the way to win the war . . .” Drisson left it unfinished.

“Something to bring up with Denham when we convene again tomorrow,” Toddrel pronounced.

Cade sat hunched on a coarse mattress covering the single cot, his legs drawn up, arms resting on his knees. The cell was part of a detention facility in the place they had been brought to. It seemed some kind of military base from the glimpses that he’d managed to get. He hadn’t seen anything of Marie since they were taken separate ways on their arrival the previous day. Sounds from outside came intermittently through the barred, glass-slatted window, of vehicles, tramping feet, voices calling orders, and aircraft taking off and landing. Besides the cot, he had a chair, a table, a wooden shelf, a washbasin with a faucet that dribbled brown water, and a toilet. Light was from a bulb, hanging by its cord. It all felt very far from Newport Beach.

They had fastened a metal collar around his neck. When he started protesting and demanded legal representation, a jolt that felt as if it were tearing his head apart knocked him off his feet, impressing the message that he wasn’t in a position to demand anything. It had been a sobering and effective lesson. In movies, people always breezed through such experiences to perform acrobatic escapes or deliver comeuppances with interest on their aggressors. The reality turned out to be very different. His head still throbbed, and his nerves felt shredded. His body seemed to have gone into a protective shock. Worse was the feeling of humiliation and outrage, the disorientation that came with the realization of his utter helplessness. And he’d had plenty of time to reflect that this could be just the mild beginning. Perhaps that was an intended part of the process. He tried not to think about Marie.

Footsteps approached outside. Keys jangled in the door. It opened to reveal two of the guards—dark-skinned and hefty, with mean, indifferent faces. One of them said something in Spanish and motioned for Cade to get up. The other was holding a unit resembling a TV remote, which controlled the collar. Cade’s body had chilled and stiffened, but he wasn’t arguing.

They took him past a row of doors with shuttered grilles, down a flight of metal stairs, and along a corridor of walls painted green up to a brown dividing line and yellow above. Steel lockers stood at intervals along one side, and red fire extinguishers hung on the wall at the end. A soldier in fatigues came out of one of the doors and passed them going the other way. They stopped at a door farther along. The guard who was leading knocked. A voice from inside called, “
Sí
.” The guard opened the door. The other jabbed Cade in the back to propel him through.

It was a bare room of painted brick walls and a concrete floor. A man in a tan jacket and white, open-neck shirt was sitting at a metal desk, empty except for a file folder, some scattered papers, a lamp, and an open laptop. He had a balding head fringed by dark, oily-looking curls, and a rounded face with brooding eyes that followed Cade curiously as he came in. Another man, leaner, with fair, cropped hair and a mustache, wearing ISS uniform with rank designation that Cade wasn’t sure of—colonel, maybe—was standing, arms folded, with his back to the corner on one side. An upright wooden chair faced the desk. The guard prodded Cade toward it while the other closed the door. He sat down, and they stationed themselves behind.

The interrogator let his eyes flicker over Cade for a few seconds, as if looking for a visual cue as to how to open. “So, the other half of the duo,” he said finally. He was American. “You two have caused a lot of problems.” He didn’t seem to expect any response at that point. “Okay, let’s save us all a lot of time. We know you were at the motel in Chattanooga, how you got there, and that you were brought out through St. Louis by this Hyadean from California, Teera Vrel.” He went on to supply some of the salient details. Maybe the idea was to sound as if he knew more than he did, with the implication that telling untruths could be risky. Cade figured that Rebecca and Julia between them would have supplied everything up to the incident in the motel. With surveillance everywhere and taps into all the computers, who knew how they had traced them to St. Louis? Anything relating to the three days between his and Marie’s fleeing from Chattanooga and their arrival at the St. Louis Hilton was notably absent from the interrogator’s account.

“Did you at any time meet the person who was referred to as Otter? His real name was Reyvek, formerly with the security forces.” Cade didn’t answer. The man nodded to one of the guards behind. A pain like a three-second migraine headache seared through Cade’s skull, then stopped. Just a warning. He realized that the rush of fear had almost caused him to loose bowel control. A sour taste welled in his mouth. His chest was pounding, palms slippery.

“I’m not here to do all the talking,” the interrogator told him. “You
will
tell us, so you might as well make it easy on yourself. Again, did you at any time meet Otter?”

Cade licked his lips. Conflicting impulses tore at him. He had never known that the urge of self-preservation could be so strong. In his confusion he couldn’t form a coherent answer. The pain began again, rising slowly this time, like a dental drill probing a nerve, only in his head. “
No!
”

“No, what?”

“No, I never met him.”

“Did you talk to him at all—by phone, maybe?”

“No.”

“You
will
tell us,” the interrogator reminded him again.

Cade felt sweat running down his back inside his shirt. “I didn’t talk to him! What else can I say?”

“CounterAction arranged his defection. Weren’t you involved with that?”

“I don’t know anything about CounterAction.”

“Don’t give us that,” the colonel said from the corner. His voice was clipped. “You’ve been an undercover informer of theirs for years. That’s what that whole setup of yours is in California. Isn’t it?”