Well, he’d had to try, he told himself. He was still too charged with headiness and irked by the way the meeting with Michelle had gone to have any regrets. In fact, just the opposite: For the first time in days he felt resolved and purposeful. After almost a week of indecision and a debilitating sense of powerlessness, it came as a relief.
Compared to days gone by, people these days had become too passive, he decided. There had been a time when men stood up for their rights and took steps to protect themselves when they felt threatened. But somewhere along the line they had let themselves be turned into sheep, conditioned to dependence on impersonal authorities who as often as not were as impotent as they were indifferent. The thought of himself as somebody able to rise above such a situation was stimulating and invigorating. As he rode the car back to the ground floor, he felt a touch of the maverick quality that he sometimes sensed Kevin projecting into him. Good for you, for once, Doug Corfe, he told himself. Sometimes a man just has to do . . .
The day was gusty with squalls of rain sweeping the streets when he came out onto Fourth Avenue. He tightened his coat about him and walked a block to where he had parked—he had borrowed Eric’s van again, in preparation for the weekend. It was a restricted loading-unloading zone only for that time of morning, but he had escaped getting a ticket. He got in quickly, half expecting a uniformed figure to leap from one of the doorways before he could start the motor. Just as he was about to pull away, his personal phone rang. He put the van back into “Park” and fished the unit from his pocket.
“Hello?”
“Doug?”
“Yes.”
“This is Michelle.”
“Oh. . . . Hi again.”
There was a short pause. Then a sigh came through audibly. “You two guys aren’t going to have a clue what to look for in there. . . . Look, if there’s absolutely no way I can talk you out of this insanity, then we’d better try and give it the best chance of coming up with something. You’re absolutely certain there’ll be no question of anybody going into the building in person?”
Corfe’s brow furrowed, then lifted as he realized what she was saying. “Does this mean you’re in with us?”
“You’re going to need help. . . . Look, I can’t talk now; I’ve got somebody waiting. Can you find that place called Chancey’s, that we went to with Kevin?”
“Sure, I think so.”
“I’ll meet you there. Can you give me, say, forty minutes?”
“Okay . . . and thanks. But you’re right. There’s absolutely no way I’m gonna change my mind about this.”
“I’ll see you, then.”
A meter warden came around the corner ahead and approached, peering to see if there was anyone in the van. Corfe shook his head as if to say not this time, smirked, engaged gear, and drove away.
“Kevin won’t need to be anywhere near,” Corfe said across the booth after the waitress had brought Michelle’s coffee and left. “I’ll borrow Eric’s van and control everything from a block or two away after the mecs go in—it’s fitted out as a complete remote-command center. Kevin can stay back at Neurodyne and couple in from there, using the lab transmitter and a unit in the van as a local relay. In fact, some of the Neurodyne mecs need special software routines that will only run on the firm’s machines, so someone would have to be there anyway. The place will be empty tomorrow. I can drop him off there on my way into town.”
“And what about Taki?” Michelle asked. “You said something about him being mixed up in this too. I don’t like that, Doug.”
“No. It was just that he and Kev together came up with this idea of using the mecs.”
“So you’re not planning on giving him a part in all this tomorrow?”
Corfe shook his head. “Aw, come on. Credit me with some sense, Michelle. This is our affair. I wouldn’t go dragging some other family into it.”