Eric smiled back, and pulled the envelope to his edge of the table. “Okay, I’ll have my report in your mailbox by tomorrow morning. Just remember that if something critical comes up, I intend to deal directly with your boss.”
“My client,” said Coulter. “I’ll see what he has to say about that. He might even be willing to accommodate you.”
“Fair enough,” said Eric.
Eric pocketed the two envelopes, and a waitress arrived with their breakfast.
“You think it could be true about Johnson?” asked Eric.
“No, but at this point I don’t trust anyone, past or present,” said Leon.
They’d closed the office for the day, and sat at Leon’s desk. The envelope Coulter had given to Eric contained ten thousand dollars in crisp, one-hundred-dollar bills now arranged in five neat stacks. They’d read the contract together. “Nothing sinister, no specifics, more like a consultant’s contract,” said Leon. “I signed one just like it, but my offer was better. I guess he thinks my tastes are more expensive than yours.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“A week ago. We met for lunch. He’s been around town. Yesterday I saw his car in the parking lot at Nataly’s place. He was just sitting there. Didn’t you see him there once?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if Coulter knows you’re seeing her?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. He seems to know everything else.”
“Either that, or Nataly knows him. I don’t think I’d like that. I know you two are getting close, but I expect you not to share our little secrets with her.”
“Of course not.”
“It wouldn’t be safe for her.”
“No threats are necessary, Leon. If she knew what I was really up to here, she’d probably run like hell.”
“I hope so,” said Leon. “The other possibility, of course, is that Coulter is watching her. It might be part of checking up on you.”
“I could ask Nataly if she knows him, claim he wants to do some export business with me.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. I want to trust her. I want to trust you, too, but you’re still not telling me things. Maybe some new orders from Gil would help.”
“What things?”
“Your new breakthrough with Sparrow. Davis had to tell me. He says you’re going to fly that thing. That’s major news, Eric, and I didn’t hear it from you. I’ve complained to Gil just this morning. Maybe he can clarify for you what our relationship is supposed to be like.”
It would serve no purpose to tell Leon that Eric was following Gil’s orders in not telling him everything. “Okay, let’s see what he says. Are you telling me everything you know? For example, do you really think John Coulter is a lawyer for a big corporation, and if we help him he’ll make us rich?”
Leon smiled. “He’s more of a business partner, maybe. He seems to be serious about the money.”
“Tempting, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. How about you?”
“I guess I’ve risked my ass for my country for so long it doesn’t make any sense to sell out now. Coulter is no friend of ours, and he lies through his teeth. He tried to tell me Johnson was working for him, and was murdered because of it.”
“Bullshit,” said Leon. “My office knew more about that guy than he knew about himself. His whole life was science.”
“Yeah, but he was killed with a military weapon.”
“Which you or I could buy on any street corner in any large city.”
“So why would Coulter tell me something like that?”
“To make you think you aren’t the first. Others have trusted him. You’re part of a team. I don’t know. I sure don’t believe him about Johnson.”
“So we stop stalling about putting a tail on Coulter, find out where he goes and who he’s seeing. My feelings are getting nasty about this guy.”
Leon raised an eyebrow. “Mine, too. Say, we’ve found something we agree about. Can we be friends, now?”
“People like us don’t have friends, Leon.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You have Nataly.”
Eric swallowed hard. The remark had hurt, and he wasn’t sure why. “I have no illusions about that. When the job is finished, I’ll be out of here. Nataly needs a responsible person in her life. She deserves it.”
“She deserves love, Eric. We all do.”
“Well, I haven’t had much luck with that,” said Eric, and heard the bitterness in his own voice.
“Sorry,” said Leon. “Look, why don’t I keep an eye on Coulter for a while. I can get help with it. You just deliver your reports, and keep them honest, at least with anything Davis might know. And when Gil orders you to trust me, you do that, too. No more charades.”
“We’ll see,” said Eric, and nodded as if he agreed. It seemed like a positive way to end the conversation. But when he got home that evening, he found an encrypted e-mail from Gil saying that due to a recent understanding between NSA and some office in the Pentagon he should keep Leon informed of all recent breakthroughs made on Sparrow, and the identities of any new players he came in contact with, including the mysterious foreign operative known as Mister Brown.
This surprised Eric, because he had not yet told Gil about his meeting with Brown, or the sudden breakthroughs with Sparrow.
So how had Gil found out about these events?
He was still thinking about it when he went to sleep that night. And shortly after that, Eric Price had still another conversation with the Golden Man.
Nataly knew that continued apprehension could make her sick, but all meditative techniques had failed her so she resorted to a non-prescribed sleeping-aid that made her groggy in the morning. She’d slept deeply over the night, but then the call came at six and upset her again, and she couldn’t get back to sleep. She arose, drank strong coffee and reread the local newspaper for the third time, checked her e-mail and found a sweet, two-word message from Eric there. ‘Miss you’, he said.
I miss you, too, the real you. I’m not in love with the killer. Oh, Eric, how I wish things were different for us.
Nataly sipped coffee and walked the floors of her house, checked doors and windows for any sign of incursion. There had been no cloaked entries since the IR sensors had gone in, but outside the residence the devices were so sensitive even a rabbit could set them off and The Council had sent out a tactical team several times to investigate strong disturbances. She could not resent them. It was the same team that had saved Eric’s life.
She checked the recorders in a downstairs closet. There had been two signals last night, quite small, both down by the pool. Rabbits were attracted to that area, and she’d put shields over the plants there to protect them from nibbling. The signals were not the reason for Vasyl’s call. “Things are heating up. We need to talk,” he’d said, and hung up on her.
Things were always heating up for Vasyl, but like it or not, Nataly felt connected to the man and his cause, if only to honor the memory of her father and his origins.
The sun was peeking over the summits of distant buttes when she had a breakfast of dry toast and a banana. She showered quickly, toweled herself dry, and examined herself in a mirror. The curves of a twenty-year-old were there, but the woman was forty-five. What would Eric think if he knew that? she wondered.
The forecast was for a sunny day, but the morning at six-thousand feet would be cool. Nataly dressed in jeans and a wool shirt, added a Gore-Tex shell when she went outside. She wore cowboy boots instead of her clumsy hiking shoes, good enough for a short walk and certainly more stylish to any tourist who might happen to come by.