“Okay, deal,” Raynes said. “I’m getting back in the truck now, but I’m keeping Katie close. When I’m back behind the wheel, I want you to throw your gun as far as you can. When you do, I’ll release Dr. Comely.”
“Very well,” Storm said.
He hopped down off the truck, on the opposite side from where Raynes was. Quickly, making sure the professor didn’t see him do it, Storm jammed his satellite phone in one of the cargo truck’s wheel wells.
“Okay, here goes my gun,” Storm said, heaving the weapon into the distance.
Moments after it landed, Storm heard the truck revving. As it started moving, Katie leapt from it. She fell and rolled on the ground.
Storm didn’t think Raynes would attempt a parting shot, but he kept in the truck’s blind spot just in case. Then he walked over to Katie, who was already up and dusting sand off her pants.
“I don’t suppose ‘thank you’ suffices?” she said.
“It’ll do just fine,” Storm said.
“I can probably do better a little later,” she said.
Storm just smiled.
TRUE TO FORM, Antony the camel had spent his energy on his mad dash and could not be persuaded to carry passengers without trying to bite them first.
So it was Dr. Comely and Storm made the roughly three-mile walk back toward the others with the camel in tow.
Katie was quiet during the first part of the journey. Storm let her have her thoughts.
Finally, she said, “I should have known.”
“No, you really shouldn’t. If you lived suspecting everyone in the world was capable of that kind of evil, you’d be a paranoid, unhappy person.”
“But there were clues,” she said. “First of all, he did seem to have too much money. Most digs you go on, you subsist on ramen noodles and Pop-Tarts. You almost pride yourself on how rough you have it. But with Raynes, there was all this fresh food brought in. And the air conditioners. And the generators. And the wood floors on the tents. And all you had to do if you needed something was ask.”
“I still don’t think you should be blaming yourself,” Storm said.
“No, but there’s more. Every other day, he would just wander off in the late afternoon, just when it was starting to cool off a little. He would walk due east with a backpack on. And then he would come back two hours later, like nothing had happened. I asked him about it, and he said he was just getting some exercise, enjoying a walk. But, seriously, who just walks through the desert for two hours for no reason?”
“Yes, but as a wise man once said, ‘Hindsight is fifty-fifty.’”
“You mean, ‘hindsight is twenty-twenty,’” she corrected.
“No. That’s what makes it wise. Hindsight is fifty-fifty. There’s no greater expression of the arbitrary, random nature of the universe than saying something is fifty-fifty. It means you have an equal chance of being wrong and being right, of winning or of losing. There’s no way to game fifty-fifty. You also can’t second-guess it, because how were you supposed to know which way to go? That’s the wisdom of ‘hindsight is fifty-fifty.’ It means you can’t go back and beat yourself up over an outcome that only seems preordained after it happened.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been in the sun too long?” Katie asked.
Storm laughed. They were within sight of the disabled cargo trucks.
“So there’s really no such thing as the International Art Protection League?” Katie asked.
“No. And yet we protected you anyway. That’s called irony, in case you’re wondering.”
“So who are you?”
Any potential answer was interrupted when Strike became aware of their approach. She walked out to meet them.
“Where’s the promethium?” she demanded.
Storm made note of the question. It was not where’s the professor? Not how are you? Not how did you get her free? It was where’s the promethium? At least he knew, once again, what Jones’s — and, therefore Strike’s — priorities were.
“It’s in the back of the truck, as far as I know,” Storm said.
“Fine. Where’s the truck?”
Storm looked at his watch. “By now? It’s probably on the highway.”
“What? You let it go?”
“It was the only way to get him to free Dr. Comely.”
Storm had enough history with Clara Strike to know her tells. Outwardly, there were few signs of activity — perhaps a slight flaring of the nostrils and a barely perceptible widening of the eyes. Inside, within her wiring, there were circuit breakers tripping.
Very evenly, Strike said, “You let the promethium go just to save a piece of ass?”
Katie’s jaw dropped. Storm didn’t back down. “I don’t know if you noticed, but that ass actually has a human being attached to it.”
“Our orders were to stop the terrorists and secure the promethium.”
“No, your orders involved getting the promethium. I want no part of that scavenger hunt, even if it’s abundantly clear that’s all Jones really cares about.”
“Don’t be absurd. He wants those terrorists’ heads on a platter. You should have heard him talk after the Pennsylvania Three.”
“Really? You think I’m being that absurd? Seriously, if it came down to imprisoning terrorists or adding to the U.S. military’s arsenal, which do you think Jones would choose?”
“It’s not that simple,” Strike said. “This is not a case of either or. We do our job right, we accomplish both.”
“I’ll bet you, right here and now, that Jones would let the terrorists skate free in exchange for a truckload of promethium.”
“I’m not getting into theoretical debates with you, Storm.”
“There might come a time when it’s not theoretical. What’s it going to be? Justice for all or weapons for generals?”
“It…it doesn’t matter. We’ve got orders to follow.”
“Orders,” Storm scoffed. “You’re going to hide behind orders?”
“It’s not hiding. It’s called doing my job,” she shot back. “But I guess you’re going to choose this moment to remind me that you don’t really work for the CIA.”
It was not their first go-around with this particular argument. And yet Storm felt himself sinking into his usual role. “Well, now that you mention it—”
“And then, after that, you’re going to make it clear that what I want and what you want are, as usual, not fully compatible.”
“This isn’t about us. Stop making it about us. It’s about mission objectives.”
“To you it’s not about us,” Strike said. “To me, it’s always about us. That’s the part you never seem to get. So let me be clear: it’s about us. Are you going to help me or not?”
Was it about them? Or was it just her way of manipulating him, like she had done so many times in the past? Storm held her glare, said nothing.
Strike turned and stalked off. The anger wasn’t faked. Storm couldn’t help but wonder if the reason for it was.
CHAPTER 24
HERCULES, California
he man with the wine stain was loving this job, mostly because he was charging by the hour.
It was going on four weeks now. Four weeks of 24-7 surveillance, billing out at a hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour, and his employer hadn’t even blinked at the money. It was being deposited in his account weekly, without hesitation and without a sign of cessation.
And, yeah, it was a little boring, watching this old lady, Alida McWhatshername, shuffle around. But for that kind of money, who cared? He hoped the job never ended. As long as no realtors decided to show the empty house he was using, he could stay here forever.