Washington (DC) Times-Post
But Rosaleen raised her hand to stop her. “My friends have told me about his orders, Pat, dear. They were given to him by some higher-up spook by the name of Brigadier Hilda Morrisey in the National Bureau of Investigations headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. This Brigadier Morrisey is afraid that I will give information away that the United States wishes to keep for itself, and so she has ordered young Dannerman here to come to my home and kill me.” She sighed, shaking her ancient head. “I was going to ask you about that. But won’t you for God’s sake please sit down and eat some of the damn bread and salt first?”
Pat Adcock did as she was told. She didn’t do it right away. She had expected a lot more to happen after what she had said-something drastic, maybe. Certainly something. At least some kind of startled outburst from Rosaleen, perhaps some violent action from one of the zek children. What she had not expected was to discover that everyone present knew more about Dannerman’s mission than she had.
“Eat,” Rosaleen repeated testily, and so she ate. The bread was heavy, dark chunks cut from a round loaf; the salt wasn’t the sort of thing you shook onto your French fries in America, but coarse crystals. It occurred to Pat that maybe there was something in the salt or the bread, some mood-altering chemical, maybe something like the date-rape stuff she had been warned against in college, something that would turn them into mere putty in the hands of these young Ukrainian zealots. But Dannerman seemed to have no such fears. He was chewing doggedly away on the tough bread, and she could read nothing from his expression. Nor did Rosaleen’s guards reveal anything, except perhaps mild annoyance at the ritual. Then Rosaleen sighed.
“All right,” she said, “now that we’ve all had a chance to settle down, would you like to explain yourself, Dan?”
He swallowed the last chunk of the bread. Then he said, “Sure. But I want you to do something first. Will you ask your friends to put their guns down? Better still, give them all to you-you do know how to use them, don’t you?”
“Why should we do that?” the one named Vassili demanded suspiciously.
Dannerman shrugged. Rosaleen studied him for a moment, then spoke. “Let’s do as he says, Vass. Give me yours and pile the rest of them in front of me.”
Vassili looked rebellious, then complied. Pat, trying to guess what Dannerman had in mind, had a sudden thought. “Be careful! He’s got a bomb-bugger, too!”
Dannerman gave her a curious look, but slowly, carefully, tugged at the waistband of his trousers, revealing the little holster. “That’s right. I want you to take this one, too, and give it to Rosaleen. Then we should all back away and give her a clear field of fire.”
“And at whom should I fire, Dan?” Rosaleen asked, sounding amused.
“Why, that’s up to you. You see, you’re right. I did get orders from Hilda Morrisey, and they were to keep whatever information you have about Scarecrow technology from falling into the hands of the Greater Ukraine terrorists. The guys,” he amplified, “who already stole the bug that was in the other Rosaleen. They think you can help them take it apart.”
“Me? I can’t.”
Dannerman nodded. “I don’t think you could, either. But they don’t know that.”
“So you were going to shoot me with that thing?”
“That was one of Hilda’s options,” Dannerman admitted. “It wasn’t mine. I was pretty sure you’d agree to be rescued. That radio you took away from me? It’s to call a plane to pick us up. Then the three of us, you and me and Pat, will fly to Vienna and then to the States. The Bureau can keep you safe there.”
“Safer than I am here with my friends?” Rosaleen asked skeptically.
“Well, yes. A lot safer. You see, at least one of your friends is a terrorist.”
Of course, that really hit the fan. All four of the zek children were shouting at once-mostly in Ukrainian, but Pat didn’t need a translator to get the gist. The big one, Vassili, was standing up and pleading with Rosaleen.
But Rosaleen was shaking her head. “Stay where you are, Vass, please,” she said. “I see now why Dan wanted me to have all the guns-assuming, of course, that he’s telling the truth.”
“Afraid so,” Dannerman said. “Figure it out for yourself, Rosaleen. How did they know what my orders were?”
Steam gun. This hand weapon, colloquially known as the “bomb-bugger,” contains reservoirs for two hypergolic liquids which, when mixed, produce a rapid evolution of steam, propelling a droplet of liquid at a muzzle velocity high enough to wound or kill an opponent. Since the weapon contains no nitrogenous chemicals and no metal parts, it is a favored handgun for concealment. The colloquial name derives from the bombardier beetle, an Asian insect which uses a similar system to stun and capture its prey.
“You tell me.”
“Because the damn terrorists have managed to get inside information from the Bureau. I don’t know how. But they have, and that’s how the Greater Ukraine guys knew.”
“But these are my friends!” Rosaleen protested. “I trust them, and anyway that doesn’t make sense. They’ve had all the time they need to kidnap me if they’re terrorists.”
“Oh, not all of them,” Dannerman said. “I think only one. Which one? I don’t know that, but probably you do. Which is the one who told you about my orders?”
And every eye in the room turned on little Marisa, who began to cry. “But we never would have hurtyou,” she managed to get out between sobs, and Rosaleen put down the gun to take the young woman in her arms.
“My dear,” she said, patting her back. “I am sure that is what you intended, but can you speak for all the others? You must tell us all you know.”
“They were coming for you tonight,” Marisa said. “They waited until now because they wanted to take gospodin Dannerman as well, as a hostage. I was supposed to-well, I wouldn’t actually have shot any of you, I swear that. But I was to make sure no one resisted.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hilda Morrisey put the team meeting off as late as possible, because it had been one of those days. It wasn’t just trying to deal with that temperamental freak, Dopey, or getting rid of the battalion of time-wasters who managed to track her down with one damn request or another. (The worst was the psychologist from Harvard who demanded-damn well demanded-that she give him access to the four Pats, or at least to the two Dannermans, because they were absolutely essential to his ongoing twin studies-and had both the Massachusetts senators insisting that she help the man any way she could.) There was still no word from Danno in Ukraine, either. And the deputy director was in a towering rage . . . and now each last member of the Ananias team was insisting on making demands of their own. Marsha Evergood: “You must let me borrow the medical Doc to see what he can do with some of our terminal cases.” The astronomer: “If you want me to find the Scarecrow comet-thing you must make every large optical telescope in the country concentrate on checking for possible objects.” The man from State: “We must know how to respond to this note from the Albanians by tonight-“
They all had one “must” after another, and, of course, they all had to take time to explain why their particular urgency was more urgent than anybody else’s. Even the ones whose problems Hilda could do nothing about. The Albanian note was the deputy director’s concern, not hers, but it wound up in her lap because the man from State hadn’t been able to reach Marcus Pell.
That wasn’t surprising. The note from Albania was one of the two things that were making Pell crazy because it was clearly the tip of the iceberg; every damn pip-squeak country in the United Nations was demanding a share in whatever came out of Starlab, under threat of using their collective veto to make sure none of the big nations got any either.
Well, some good, old-fashioned political horse-trading would eventually settle that. It could probably be handled with a bunch of promises, which might or might not have to be kept. But what about the other thing that fed the deputy director’s fury? It wasn’t a thing, exactly; it was Senator Alicia Piombero, who had most injudiciously spoken off the record to somebody who had turned around and put it on the record; and so the day’s crop of news stories. NBI’s New Spy Machine. Tomorrow’s Prisons in the Bureau. How Scarecrow Machines Threaten American Liberties.
It didn’t surprise Hilda that Senator Piombero chose to miss that afternoon’s meeting of the team. She wished they all had; and when at last she was able to adjourn it she breathed a sigh of relief. She checked herself out and headed for home; because this was the evening she had resolved to take for herself, in order to deal with something quite personal and not very far from urgent.