Time to change that?
She hisses at the thought. No way is she going to call in Lincoln. Do that, and she won’t see Shaw again unless there’s an open coffin at his second funeral.
A new thought comes: What about Tamara?
Tamara might be willing to run a command post. True could link her up to the MARC, and then she’d have someone to shadow her, to watch over her shoulder and witness, and to bring word to Alex if it all goes south—
No.
Tamara is not a soldier. If True is going to connect with anyone, it needs to be someone who’s been on the front lines before. And, it occurs to her, it should also be someone Lincoln can’t fire when this is done. A cold smile touches her cracked lips. As it happens, she knows someone like that, someone who’s got nothing else useful to do.
She picks up her burner phone and puts through a call to Colonel Colt Brighton. It’s the middle of the night in the DC area but the old man is a night owl and he’s got enough sense of adventure that he’ll usually pick up an unknown number.
He must be bored because the phone rings only once and he’s on the line: “Tough luck,” he says. “She gave you a fake number.”
“Don’t say anything else, Dad,” True warns him. “If you’re not alone, end this call, excuse yourself, and call me back.”
Two seconds of silence, then a whispered “Fuck.”
The call drops.
She waits. Less than a minute later, the screen flashes an incoming call. She picks up.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Where are you?”
In terse sentences, she tells him. He’s not shy with his opinion. “You’ve gone off the fucking deep end.”
“Maybe so, old man, but this is about Diego. You willing to shadow me or not?”
“Shit. Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Good.” Colt is arrogant, abrasive, and domineering—she would never willingly put herself under his command—but he’s not shy on the line. He’ll back her until this is done.
“Do not tell anyone,” she warns him. “Not until this is over.”
“Over one way or another?”
“Yeah.”
“God damn it, True. You have always been a pain in the ass, but I do not want to see you die.”
“Good to hear, because your job is to help me stay alive.”
“No matter how stupid you are.”
“Nothing ever changes, huh?”
“God help us all. What’s the fucking plan?”
“For now I’m going to set you up with two devices, one to watch the street, one to watch this courtyard. But once he’s here, you don’t talk. You just witness. And if I don’t get home, you let Alex know what happened.”
Forty minutes later, the sound of Colt’s low, old-man voice in her ear startles True out of a catnap: “You with me, girl?”
“I’m here,” she breathes, straightening in the cushioned chair.
“I’ve got one armed individual, male, approaching your location from the lower end of the block.”
“Roger that.”
He’s watching the video feed from the sparrow. She reaches for her MARC to confirm what he sees: a lean figure of a man, with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. The angle is too steep to show his face, the light too dim to be sure of the color of his hair.
“That him?” Colt asks.
“Got to be.” She wonders where he’s been and what he knows, and why he’s carrying the Triple-Y. Does he know Lincoln is here? She swipes with her data glove to clear the MARC’s screen. “Quiet now, old man. I’ll talk to you on the other side.”
She takes off her TINSL before Colt can object, toggles it off, and tosses it into her daypack. Then she’s up and moving sideways to the shelter of a column that supports the second-floor balcony. The pistol comes out of her pocket as the front doors swing open, riding on their silent mechanisms.
The passageway amplifies Shaw’s soft voice: “You getting jumpy, True?”
“Fair assessment,” she admits over the rock-club rhythm of her heart. She peers out from behind the column. Her MARC gathers enough light that she can see he’s still dressed as he was earlier in the evening, and he’s still wearing his off-brand visor. It’s the Triple-Y that’s new, and a small daypack on his other shoulder.
“Put the gun away,” he says. “I told you before, I got you under my wing.”
She steps out from behind the column to stand under the open sky. They face each other across the courtyard. “You went dark on me,” she accuses.
“You were taken care of, until you skipped.”
“Communications failed. I was not acquainted with a mission plan. Under those circumstances, I felt more secure making my own way.” In a more conciliatory tone she adds, “So far as I could tell, I wasn’t followed.”
“It’s quiet out there,” he agrees. “Now put the gun away.”
She does it, returning the pistol to her pocket.
“Where’s your car?” she asks as he crosses the courtyard.
“Down the hill, around the corner.” He speaks just loudly enough to be heard over the burbling fountain. “You knew I was coming. You got eyes on the street?”
“Yes.” The courtyard too, but she doesn’t mention the beetle hidden in plain sight beside a broken tile at the mouth of the passage, where its swiveling camera lens can watch the courtyard and the front door. His narrowed eyes and half-smile tell her he’s not fooled.
She hands him a bottle of water. He takes it and drinks half. She’s uncomfortable in the open so she returns to her seat beneath the balcony. He eases his pack to the floor, then sits in the second chair, the block table between them, stretching out his long legs, holding the Triple-Y cradled in the crook of his arm. “This Li Guiying,” he says. “She has skills.”
True takes off the MARC and rubs her aching forehead. “Yes.”
He turns to look at her through the clear lens of his visor. “So why did she hire those two amateurs?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t her. Does it make sense that she would use her own name?”
“If she was in a hurry. If she wants you to know.”
“Maybe it was just a mistake.”
“Not the first.”
His focus on Guiying is oddly reassuring. It tells her he doesn’t know yet that Lincoln is here. Good, because she needs this time.
She says, “Earlier tonight you were surprised that I already knew you and Diego were abandoned, left to die in Nungsan. But you were not abandoned by your country, Shaw. I want you to know that.”
“Yeah? I’ve heard that speech before.”
Which, all on its own, is interesting because it implies he’s been in contact with some element of the American government. CIA, maybe? It wouldn’t surprise her to learn he’s done work for them—dark and dirty work—but she doesn’t pursue the question. That’s not why she’s here and maybe she doesn’t want to know.
“I haven’t talked to anyone else tonight,” she assures him. “Except for a police officer, who asked if I was all right.”
He takes another sip of water, looking thoughtful.
She tells him, “We had no idea you were alive, until Tadmur.”
“How did you work it out?”
“Guesses and gossip and gut instinct.” She doesn’t want to tell him about Miles. “And if you were alive, that meant the story I’d been told about Nungsan was wrong. I wanted the truth, so I asked a friend in the State Department. A few discreet inquiries were made, whispered answers were given. There’s no proof, but there is a belief that some faction of Chinese Intelligence knew at the time exactly where you and Diego had been taken. They chose not to share that knowledge, they used disinformation to steer our people away from Nungsan, and in the end they obliterated the village. No one on our side knows why. No one could tell me why, Shaw. But you know why, don’t you?”