The thought angers her. Lincoln is a friend, one she respects, but in the matter of Shaw Walker their goals are not the same. That’s why she’s here by herself—and she is not going to tolerate interference.
Using her phone, she dictates a text: “I’m being watched. Aerial surveillance. A Sibolt. If it’s not yours, be cautious.”
She waits under the canopy for another minute but gets no answer. Her gaze shifts to the lower right, cueing the time display on her visor to brighten. 2328. She has two minutes to reach the rendezvous point.
She walks swiftly, and soon she can see the corner where she has been instructed to wait. The surrounding buildings are four and five story apartments, shops and a restaurant at street level. The restaurant is still open. Parked cars line the curbs. Traffic is sparse. She sees no other pedestrians, no one waiting at the corner. It’s possible someone is waiting inside one of the parked cars. The idea disturbs her. It makes the hair on her neck stand up. She eyes each car as she passes, determined not to be taken by surprise. But no one’s there.
She reaches the corner, looks up and down the cross street. Half a block away, two young men smoking outside a club. No one else in sight. No one gets out of the vehicles. There’s a corner café—closed now—with large glass windows. She retreats into the shadow of its canopy, a position that lets her watch both streets.
A few cars pass, their headlight beams sliding over her. An expensive sedan slows almost to a stop as the driver takes a look. She lets her MARC record an image of his face and of his car, uploading it to a secure folder—a resource that will be emailed to both Alex and Lincoln should she disappear.
A fierce faint buzz from overhead seizes her attention. She looks up in time to see the golden burst of a small explosion no more than ten meters above the building diagonally across the intersection. The sound is like a firecracker. She drops into a crouch as the concussion echoes back and forth between the buildings. The luxury sedan accelerates hard and disappears. True remains down, unsure what happened until her visor inventories the sky again.
The Sibolt is gone.
“Holy shit,” she whispers, venting tension. He took out the Sibolt. He must have had some kind of kamikaze up there and he took out the Sibolt.
The realization brings with it a crazy kind of relief, because he could have targeted her with the kamikaze if he wanted to. She knows now that’s not his purpose.
She checks the time. The digital display brightens under her gaze. 2329 shifts to 2330.
Cautiously, she stands up. A van rolls past, followed by a scooter with a helmeted rider. An old beat-up SUV with tinted windows turns into sight a block away. It advances toward her at a moderate pace, stopping briefly on the other side of the intersection. Instinct tells her this is it. Sweat prickles under her arms. Her heart booms. When the SUV rolls forward again, she moves out into the street to meet it.
She approaches from the passenger side. As she does, the window slides down. She is ready to drop, or to turn and run, but she tries not to show it as she peers inside.
Dim light cast by a dash video screen illuminates the driver. He’s dressed like a civilian, khaki trousers and a darker, long-sleeved pullover. His large hands are on the steering wheel but his left hand—the hand Miles described as crippled—holds the wheel in a distorted grip. It’s his index and little finger that curl to meet his thumb. The two middle fingers don’t help out, standing off instead, stiffly curved.
He wears a data glove on his right hand, and on his right wrist, a bracelet that looks like something a child would wear. It’s made of clear, colorless, flat plastic links with embedded wiring. A tracking device? Maybe.
His face is weathered, his eyebrows thinner than she remembers, his hair darker but maybe that’s just the light. His hair has been buzz-cut, but it could use another trim. So could his beard.
He’s wearing an augmented reality visor—not a MARC, some other brand. He’s not looking at her but she can see through the screen to his spooky, pale eyes. Their focus shifts, taking in the street, and maybe the rearview mirror, or the data streamed on his display. He’s watchful, on guard. She notes the tension in the set of his mouth and wonders if he’s expecting an assault.
But is it him? It’s been so long, she’s not sure. “You got this right?” she asks him, her voice soft but urgent.
A cold smile crooks his lips. He still doesn’t look at her. “Get in, True, if you want this to happen.”
Goddamn, she thinks. It’s as if a ghost has spoken. Goosebumps rise on her arms, on her neck, at that rough, raspy voice. She remembers that voice more clearly than she remembers his face. She glances into the backseat. As best she can see, it’s empty. She opens the door and gets in, settling her daypack into her lap.
He drives. The window closes and cool air from the vents blows against her flushed cheeks. The cabin smells of sweat, dust, and a faint lingering odor of cigarette smoke. She twists around to get a better look at the backseat. No one’s there. No one’s on the road behind them. Still, she doesn’t believe he’s alone.
Motion draws her gaze to his bracelet. It’s stirring. It’s no longer a closed circle. Instead it’s crawling around his wrist like an agitated centipede. She can see mandibles. He ignores it and asks her, “You got a tracking signal?”
“Nothing running.”
“You recording?”
“No. I had a sky survey going but that’s done now.”
The centipede settles down, transforming back into a bracelet. He says, “I’d feel better if you put the visor away.”
“Not a problem.” She shoves her pack to the floor beside her feet, where there’s a rubber mat filthy with grit and pale dust. She takes off her MARC, making a show of powering it down, folding it, sliding it into her jacket pocket. “What the hell is that thing on your wrist?”
“Personal defense,” he says as he turns onto a different street. “It’s got biomarkers on you now, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Good to know.”
He drives sedately but without hesitation, familiar with where he is and where he’s going. She notes the streets and passing buildings, trying to assemble a map of their route in her mind.
“Other devices?” he asks her.
“Sure.”
“Power them down. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but you never know who’s hacked in.”
It’s a reasonable precaution. She gets out her phone and her tablet, and shuts them off. The origami army is already dormant, so she leaves those devices untouched in her pack. “You worried about being identified?” she asks.
He drawls, “No, I’ve got no reason to worry. This is my town. One of ’em. I’m just a tourist who forgot to go home. An expatriate.”
“Jon Helm is a tourist?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard he’s a notorious mercenary, head of a black-hat PMC.”
His mouth quirks. The motion highlights a scar on his lip, visible even in the low light from the dash. Miles mentioned that scar. Shaw says, “It’s a common name.”
She considers this, wondering how many versions of Jon Helm he controls. Each one no doubt supplied with a flawless history, full documentation, biometric confirmation. She wonders if someone in the American intelligence community helped him set it all up, or if he bought versions of the name on the black market.
“I thought it would take longer to find you,” she says. “Were you already here in Rabat?”