“Oh, Doug, don’t sound so suspicious about everything. It was the reason why he needed to call me tonight, that’s all. Is everything else okay?”
“Yes. We’ve got the codes and passwords.” Corfe’s tone wavered. “Why are we doing this? . . .”
Michelle shook her head. How roles could reverse. Now that she felt confident and optimistic, finally, he was suddenly the one having doubts. “You know why we’re doing it,” she said. “Why ask a question like that?”
“I’ve just got this premonition that nothing’s going to come of it. We’re wasting our time.”
“There’s only one way we’ll ever know,” Michelle said. “Go and unwind, and then get a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Corfe paced around for a long time after he hung up. Now he could see dozens of ways for something to go wrong. The more he thought about them, the more impossible the odds of avoiding all of them seemed. Talking had been good for venting his frustration. But all his experiences of actual doing had prepared him for circumstances that were very different from those he faced now.
In his Navy years, there had always been the Book to spell out exactly what was to be done and how, and provided you stuck by it, you were protected. Other people had already made the decisions. Having to write his own Book and then stand by the consequences hadn’t been part of the training.
Restless for some distraction, he sat down at the computer in a corner of his living room and dialed in for his e-mail. There was a message from Kevin, a response to one that Corfe had sent earlier. It read:
Will be ready in the morning at 10:30.
Tried out the remote hookup with Taki. It works just great. And we can get at hardcopy as well as what’s on a screen. Another week would have been really useful. I’ve made a list of extras we might need. We can pick most of them up at the lab.
Bests,
K.
Corfe felt chagrined. Even the kid was sounding positive and set to go. He worked hard to pull himself together. It had been a mistake to come back home and spend this evening on his own with no plans for anything to do. He’d have been better off staying in town—perhaps could have gone somewhere with Michelle and let a little of her buoyancy carry over. It was different for people like her, who ran businesses, he decided. They wrote a new page of their own Book every day of the week.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Shortly before noon on Saturday morning, Corfe halted the van in one of the slots in the same parking lot that he had used the previous afternoon. The weather had brightened up, with the sun peeking through broken cloud, but the reports were of new squalls moving up from the south. The city was quiet, having a lazy holiday, the parking lot more empty than full.
After learning from Kevin that morning about Kevin and Taki’s experiments the evening before, Corfe had agreed that they needed to send more tools and accessories into Garsten’s office to tackle desk drawers and file cabinets. The van had its own collection of mecs that could carry the additional items in. But first, the ones that were already inside would need to check out the several possible entry points that Corfe had noted the previous afternoon, and find the most suitable.
Michelle shook her head wonderingly in the passenger seat next to him while he checked through the things they had brought. “I don’t believe this. I started out trying to instill some respect in you for proper procedures. You end up turning me into a criminal. I’m a contract lawyer. This isn’t what I do.”
“Don’t blame me, blame Eric,” Corfe answered. “Everyone who comes near him ends up having their life turned inside out.”
Michelle nodded. “You’re right. And outwardly I’ve never met anyone more charming. How does he have this effect on people? Why do we end up doing things like this?”
“I guess because of what he stands for. And we all love him for it.” Corfe picked up the van’s phone and called the Test Lab at Neurodyne. Kevin answered a few seconds later.