She walks up the next block, and as she does, she digs a small case out of her daypack. Inside is a soldier from the origami army. Tamara calls it a sparrow though it doesn’t look like one. Its dark-brown avian wings are powered by button batteries packed into an oblong body with a shape that reminds True of a fishing lure, the sort with eyes painted on to make it resemble a fish. A triangular tail serves as a stabilizing third wing. It has a wide-angle camera and radio-frequency sensors, along with software to interpret what it finds, and it’s agile enough to fly in tight spaces or securely perch in a hidden niche—so it’s useful, despite a limited battery life. She syncs it to the MARC’s display and when she reaches the top of the target block, she launches it into the air.
Without guidance, the sparrow spirals upward. True lets it climb until it’s higher than the houses. Then she uses her data glove to send it shooting swiftly down the street and over the outer wall of the target house. A circuit of the riad’s rooftop terrace shows no one there. One end of the terrace is sheltered beneath an ornate tiled roof held up by graceful white columns. Heavy curtains, tied back by tasseled ropes, hang at the corners. Sheltered beneath are a daybed, upholstered chairs, and a stairway that drops out of sight behind a clean white wall. The rest of the terrace is open to the sky. There are lounge chairs, a patio table with a folded umbrella, and three huge, hip-high terracotta pots presently empty of flowers. At the terrace’s center, a well looks down into the interior courtyard.
The sparrow’s video feed is distorted, super-wide angle, but True can make out soft garden lights in the courtyard below and a central fountain with four small trees around it.
No one is in sight.
Tipping her hand forward, she directs the sparrow to descend. A balcony overlooking the courtyard surrounds the lightless second floor. Behind the balcony are rooms with uncurtained windows and folding doors all pushed open. She guides the sparrow in a circuit, identifying sitting rooms and bedrooms, but no one is there. The beds are bare mattresses and there is no clutter, nothing personal, even in the bathrooms.
And there are no surveillance devices. None that the sparrow can detect.
She explores the ground floor next, where there are two large salons and a modern kitchen. Again, no one, and no evidence of anyone—no dirty dishes in the kitchen and no ready lights indicating active electronics anywhere—but also no sense of abandonment. The house is clean, the trees and the fountain in the courtyard well tended. She thinks maybe this is a vacation rental being cleaned and prepared for its next booking.
She summons the sparrow back as its battery reserve shades into orange. She considers calling Shaw again, but she has already stood in one place too long, so she descends the steep street until she’s outside of the target. Her visor picks out and highlights a tiny camera lens mounted above the arched double doors. She’s only a little surprised when the riad’s doors start to swing silently open.
If the doors opened all the way, the entry would be wide enough for a small car. But they swing inward only far enough to allow her to enter… which she does. On the other side is an arched passageway to the courtyard. It feels like walking into a trap, but her momentum carries her past both fear and good judgment. The doors close behind her, the click of an electronic lock audible past the burbling of the fountain.
She takes out the pistol and walks through all the rooms in the house, repeating the survey she just made with the sparrow, confirming that no one is home. By the time she reaches the rooftop terrace, she has decided that Shaw does not live here, that he never has. It’s not right for him. It’s too open, subject to surveillance from overhead and, given the open-air rooms, impossible to secure against creeping robotic beetles.
Still, he sent her here. The house recognized her. She is supposed to be here.
She wonders: Why this place? and Will he come? She could try calling him again, but surely he must know she is here?
Dawn is an hour away. She decides she’ll wait that long, and no longer. If he’s going to come, he’ll come by then.
She changes out the sparrow’s batteries. An ornate iron railing tops the low wall enclosing the terrace. She secures the sparrow’s perching feet around the rail’s lowest rung, positioning the device so that its wide-angle video includes both the street and the sky. The fresh batteries will allow for hours of surveillance if the sparrow is passive and does not fly.
She goes downstairs, stopping in at the kitchen. There’s no food, just bottled water in the refrigerator, but her dust-dry mouth and her aching skull make it clear that water is what she needs. She takes two bottles to the courtyard. In a shadowy back corner beneath the shelter of the second-floor balcony there is a cluster of furniture: a padded bench with carved wooden legs, low coffee table in front of it, and on the other side of the table, two cushioned chairs with a porcelain block table between them. The chairs face the courtyard, with a view of the passageway and the front doors, so True chooses one as her base of operations and sits.
Relief floods her body, the gratitude of muscles that are tight and tired. She acknowledges, too, a deep sadness for things lost and broken. She takes off the visor and leaves it on the little block table to hibernate. Opening a bottle of water, she sips it slowly.
After a few minutes of waiting, she flirts with the idea of checking her messages. A fierce anxiety follows. She hasn’t checked her regular accounts—voice, email, or text—since she walked off the plane in Manila, knowing there would be an emotional payload and not wanting to be distracted by it. But now the thought is in her head. Nagging at her. She resists for a time, ten or fifteen minutes. Then she slides her tablet out of her thigh pocket.
With the decision made, she doesn’t hesitate further. She switches on voice and text messaging, and authorizes her email to download, priority only—priority being determined by Ripley.
There are fewer than she expected. She scans the lists, finding two voice messages from Alex, both date-stamped soon after she sent her last email. She doesn’t listen to them. She’ll listen to them later, when this is over.
After he got no response to his voice messages, he sent an email with the subject line, I need you to call me. Then an hour after that another, pleading, CALL ME. I need to know you’re okay.
As she reads this, her chest tightens. She squeezes her eyes shut for just a few seconds. But she leaves the emails unread, afraid of the weight they contain.
Nothing from him since. Understandable.
She presses the cool water bottle against her hot cheek and moves on.
Only one message from Lincoln, a voice message, date-stamped ninety minutes after his flight departed Manila. Her breast rises and falls in a deep sigh. No hiding from the content of this one. Lincoln has followed her to Rabat and if he has let drop any hint of his plans or his intentions here, she needs to know it. She plays the message, her anxiety ramping up yet again at the quiet fury in his raspy voice. “God damn it, True. You need to stop and think what you’re doing. Shaw Walker is not a hero, he’s not a savior, and he’s not a substitute for Diego. He is a dangerous, unstable man…”
Anger flares. “I know,” she says aloud through gritted teeth. “I know, I know. Don’t tell me what I already know.”
She puts the tablet down, drinks water, and evaluates. She’s tired and emotionally worn and her temper is short—none of which is an excuse for poorly considered tactics. She’s not going to start making excuses. “This is on me,” she says. “My choice. My responsibility.” But she’s never operated in such isolation before.