“Well, shit,” I said, holding it up. “No wonder.”
The Amazons crowded in. “Is flash drive,” said Oxana.
“What’s more relevant is that this thumb drive came out of the Black Sun guy’s laptop,” I said. “I grabbed it when I was bailing out the other day. What with all the other stuff, I just forgot. I wonder what’s on it that made them send a bugbear after me? I must have really pissed them off. And where did they find the power or the skill to manage something like that in the first place?”
I stuck it into Caz’s computer, but the thing was encrypted up the yin-yang. We tried a bunch of predictable passwords, things like “Sonnenrad,” “Aryan,” “Fatherland,” but without luck. It occurred to me they might not be as stupid as people in the movies and the password might be “4Dkah2%9ja3mv5” or something. I opened myself a beer and thought about it for a moment, then went outside and walked until I had some bars on my phone.
“Clarence,” I said when he picked up. “I need you again. I’ve got a thumb drive from that bunch of neo-Nazis I keep having problems with. It’s related to the other thing. I need someone to get into it, but it’s got all this encryption shit I can’t deal with.”
He was silent for a long moment. “First of all, Bobby, I want you to start calling me ‘Harrison.’ It’s my Earth name and, as I keep telling you, I don’t like being called Clarence.”
“Okay, okay. Blackmailer. I’m sorry, Harrison, but I need your help. Can you come over?”
I could hear how pleased he was, and it made me want to put a wastebasket over his head and bang on it until he was less happy. “Thank you, Bobby. Now, as far as your thumb drive goes, I’m not really very good with that stuff.”
“Oh, shit, come on! You found that address ten times faster than I could have!”
“That’s different. That was just a records search. You want someone to break encryption.” He paused. “You know, that’s actually something Wendell used to do.”
“Wendell? As in your boyfriend?”
“He’s not really my boyfriend, Bobby. We’re seeing each other, but we’re not ready to make that kind of—”
“Don’t. Just . . . don’t. Tell me this—how did you meet him? Did he come up to you in a low tavern of some kind and say, ‘Hey, you’re really cute. I hear you work with Bobby Dollar—let’s hang out, you and me.’ Or anything similar?”
“No.” He was insulted. “If you have to know, I met him at a club, but I went up to him and asked him to dance.”
“If your relationship survived the dance floor, he’s either desperate or blind. Does he take a dog with you everywhere you go, even into restaurants?”
“You’re not funny, Bobby. And you’re the one who wants the favor, remember?”
I was getting desperate. Things were mounting up fast, and the number of questions still far outweighed the answers, especially adding the Black Sun Faction back into the problem. And on top of everything else, I no longer had a car. “Okay. I’ll give him a chance, but don’t bring him here. There’s a coffee shop on University Avenue, just on the Palo Alto side of the freeway. Can you find it? Bring Wendell, and we’ll talk. I have to walk, so make it twenty minutes, minimum.”
“Why are you walking?”
“Why are you talking? Twenty minutes. Wear a white carnation. The code phrase is: Gay Mafia Strong-arms Angel in Need.” I hung up before he could gloat.
• • •
Despite having to limp there on foot, I beat the pair by a few minutes, which gave me time to down the first cup of coffee I would need to make it through the evening. I don’t know how you’d feel, but having a very powerful angel laugh knowingly at me in the morning, then a squishy gelatinous mass with teeth try to kill me in the afternoon made for a wearying combination. What I really wanted to do was take a nap, because I was beginning to think that sleep might be a scarce commodity in the days ahead.
What can I say? The Highest knew what He was doing when He invented caffeine. Seriously, hats off to the Big Guy.
Wendell was just as fair-haired and handsome in person as he had been from my apartment window, with a mustache so neatly trimmed it almost didn’t look real. Even more depressing, he was a nice guy. Which didn’t prove he was trustworthy, of course. We shook hands. His grip was pretty impressive.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Bobby,” he said.
“I have alibis for everything except the misdemeanors. I don’t worry about those.”
He laughed, which just pissed me off. I hate it when people I don’t want to like think I’m funny. I’m pretty much a cat that way. Scratch my stomach, and I’ll purr at you, but I’ll want to gut you with my claws even more than if you’d ignored me.
“No, really,” he said. “And not just from Harrison.”
I must have looked skeptical, because Clarence broke in. “Wendell used to be in Counterstrike!”
Now skepticism became something a little deeper. “You’re joking.”
“CU Nephelai,” Wendell said. “The Clouds. You were Lyrae. People still talk about you.”
The Clouds were one of the support groups for the frontline Counterstrike units like mine. We often took one of them with us to run special commo or mess with various kinds of machines. Somebody like that would be a goldmine for the kinds of things I might have to do in the days ahead—which meant it all seemed a little too perfect. Or was that just my paranoia engine running hot? Two different kinds of near-death experiences in one day can do that to a guy.
I quizzed him a bit, but everything Wendell said made sense. He knew the right people, the right things, even remembered the busted soda machine at Camp Zion that people called Saint Peter because it turned you away just when you thought you’d reached the Promised Land. That didn’t prove anything, of course. If I needed to, I could put together a spurious background in a day that would convince you I was a Secret Service agent or a children’s television host. Besides, I wasn’t worried that he’d been working in a CU; I was worried that he might still be working for our bosses, and I might be his current assignment.
“I don’t know if Clar . . . Harrison has explained to you, but simply hanging out with me is probably a capital offense these days. And what I’d be asking you to do is a lot worse than that. I don’t like other people getting in trouble because of my problems.”
Wendell gave me that sensible, clear-eyed look I was already beginning to resent. “Harrison told me a lot. Enough to know that I think you’re trying to do the right thing.”
I shook my head. “Easy to say now. Harder to say when our bosses toss you in the dumbwaiter and drop you into the burning basement for keeps. This is serious shit I’m in, and none of it is fun. Why should I trust a novice?” Why should I trust anyone was the real question, but I didn’t have much choice, I simply couldn’t do this without allies.
Wendell nodded. “I first figured out I was gay when I was at Zion,” he said. He looked at Clarence and smiled. “I kind of freaked out. I went to my loke . . . I mean my NCO.”
I almost smiled myself. “Don’t worry. I know what a CU loke is.”
“Right. Of course. Anyway, I went to see him, and I told him. I was fresh out of Heaven and I figured something had gone wrong with me. I didn’t know if I had been given a homosexual body or I’d messed up the new body with a homosexual soul, but obviously I wasn’t doing things right. He said, and I’m pretty much quoting him, ‘Son, soldiers have been humping soldiers a long, long time. Hell, those ancient Greeks went into battle without any pants on, ring-a-dings swingin’ in the breeze! And any army grunt will tell you that most navies are as queer as dinner theater. Now me, I don’t care if you like ladies or gentlemen. Just remember, No means No. Be respectful of your fellow soldiers, because you all have to protect each other out there, and that means you gotta trust each other.’ That’s all he said.”