A Song Called Youth (54 page)

American satellites watched over the new Air Force installations, over receiving stations for the microwave power beamed from solar-collecting stations in orbit. Some of the satellites were controlled from the CIA installation at Langley. Around the installation rose fences, wire, cameras, checkpoints enclosing a series of nondescript government buildings with polarized windows.

Focus on one of those windows. A square of blueblack in synthetic stone. Beyond it sat a man named Stoner, alone but for the camera that watched him. He was hunched over a WorkCenter keyboard. Corte Stoner was both large and small; his upper half was large, with a thick chest, wide shoulders, and a well-padded middle; his legs were shorter than most, his hips seemed almost miniature. He had a pudding-bland face, except for his sharp blue eyes. His short brown hair was combed and brilliantined in strict imitation of an old photo he’d seen of Hank Williams. He wore jeans, a red plaid shirt mae of real cloth, and a cream Western-style jacket.

But his mind was focused through his sharp blue eyes on the screen, sifting data. Finding in it events and observations that were like pottery shards to an archaeologist; he could fit them together, come up with a whole more than the sum of the parts. He could see the man hidden in the file.

It was Corte Stoner’s job to turn the file and its data back into a man. To do that, he had to reconstitute the man in his own mind.

Just now he was studying the thin file on a man named Daniel Torrence. Called by his guerilla companions “Hard-Eyes.”

The file had been provided to the CIA Domestic Branch by the Second Alliance International Security Corporation; the file’s approval-of-transfer had been initialed by Sackville-West himself. Evidently the SA held Torrence in high regard as an enemy combatant.

Stoner sat back in his chair, felt a tingle of gratification as it readjusted its contours to his movement. He patted his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, thinking he might slip outside for a smoke break, and then remembered that his wife had taken the cigarettes that morning; had kissed him and taken them from his pocket at the same time. “You’re giving them up, remember?” she said.

He smiled and sipped tepid ersatz coffee, to give his hands and mouth something to do. The war had interrupted coffee shipments; the Russkies at the Panama canal.

The file said that Torrence had been a college student at the outset of the war. An American, born in Rye, New York, he had lived most of his life just north of San Francisco, in Marin County. Upstate middle-class family. He’d gone to London to study political science. He seemed to be “doing it to have something to do,” according to the dean at the New London School, in England. Some kind of exchange-student thing. He leaned toward Democratic Socialism but with “no particular zeal.” When the war began, Gatwick air traffic was tied up, so Torrence tried to get out through Amsterdam, found himself stuck there instead. Became leader of a gang of scavengers ducking the worst of the war as it moved through the Netherlands, trying to survive day-to-day and “presumably waiting for transportation to the States.” Recruited into the New Resistance by unknown persons, “probably in return for promises of food and eventual transportation home.” Evidently Torrence became ideologically entangled. Became convinced that the NATO forces and the SA were in some kind of racist collusion, judging from the text of pamphlets the NR circulated (File Appendix 12, Sec. C & D).

Stoner shrugged.

So what was the big deal? The agency had given the NR a Focus One rating. That meant that all overseas experts and a significant number of Stateside personnel were to focus on the guerrillas. There were less than two thousand active guerrillas in France. Admittedly they’d significantly inconvenienced the so-called “peacekeeping” private army, the SA. But essentially they had to be some sort of bandit outfit, just another gang of scavengers feeding off the leavings of those two monstrous predators, the New-Soviet and NATO armies.

Why was CIA Domestic so involved in this? There weren’t likely many NR agents in the United States. They were not known to sell information to the New-Soviets. They had performed no bombings, no robberies. They
had
been linked to two assassinations—one attempted and one successful. Rick and Ellen Mae Crandall. But the New Resistance had a sort of feud with the Second Alliance people—it wasn’t really a matter of National Security. The SA was supposed to be an employee of the USA, and NATO—but not synonymous with its interests. Keep tabs on them, yes—but Focus One?

There was a war on, after all. Common sense dictated, from Stoner’s viewpoint, that all available agency personnel focus on counterintelligence; on countering the New-Soviets. Sure, the SA was performing a useful service for NATO by keeping order behind its lines, discouraging saboteurs, helping stabilize logistics. But the CIA, it seemed to Stoner, was allotting too much manpower and too many man-hours to the concerns of the SA. The president herself had signed a Classified Executive Order adjuring them to “give all necessary aid to NATO’s peacekeeping force.”

And the file on Torrence had been stamped
PrS.—Priority Subject.
Stoner read:

Torrence quickly graduated from a complete outsider to become one of the top five operatives in the European NR. He has been directly involved in every major guerrilla action since his recruiting, and one eyewitness described him as “ruthless and a little crazy when he’s leading an attack” (extractor ref. SA872) and “a leader, but also the guy is a dog at Steinfeld’s heels” (ibid.). Subject believed to have engineered the capture of the Arc de Triomphe shortly before its Jægernaut demolition in SA Operation Cold Bear and the subsequent evacuation of Steinfeld and NR core from Paris.

This subject experienced a profound motivational shift, with subsequent radicalization, after Paris training. Computer personality analysis and projections foresee extensive militant political involvement and volatile potential for Movement Leadership. Long-term survival of subject Torrence is counter to the best interests of SAISC/CIA projects. Advise subject be terminated with extreme prejudice . . .

“Can’t kill what you can’t reach,” Stoner murmured. He glanced over the text again and his eyes stopped on
the best interests of SAISC/CIA projects.
When had it become SAISC/CIA projects, in that order, with that sense of cohesion? There was an
Extractor Reference
in the file. Some captured NR had been “extracted” by SA operatives. The SA had access to extractors? That was news to him. And Operation Cold Bear—military nomenclature.

There was a Big Military slant to the SA, though they were supposed to be more like a private cop force with army methods. And the guerrillas claimed the Second Alliance was actively racist. It made Stoner nervous, because it made him wonder about Kupperbind.

Emmanual Kupperbind, CIA liaison to the Mossad. Kupperbind had submitted—unsolicited—a report on the “extra-contract activities” of the Second Alliance International Security Corporation in the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and France. He’d claimed the Second Alliance International Security Corporation itself was a security risk. He alleged “systematically racist activities” and “the implementation of a European apartheid” that would, among other things, inevitably alienate Israel, at a time when American intelligence was already in danger of losing access to Israeli intelligence—some of the best in the world.

Not only had Kupperbind not been taken seriously at the agency, he’d been recalled and put out to pasture. Retired four years early.

There was a rumor that Kupperbind’s dismissal was entirely a function of agency politics: Pendleton, the Director, was said to have gotten his job partly through the influence of the SA’s panel of international security “experts”; the panel advised the president, from time to time, on terrorism and saboteurs. Pendleton owed the SAISC favors, it was assumed.

Whatever, all copies of Kupperbind’s report were gathered up and shredded.

All except one. Stoner had a copy. He hadn’t read it in detail. He’d been busy, and the whole thing had smelled of eccentric alarmism.

But when the clerk had come around asking for the report, Stoner had made excuses. Told them it was locked up in one of his cabinets and it was a hassle to dig it out just now when he had so much work to do. He’d drop it off later that afternoon.

Only he never did drop it off. He wasn’t sure why he’d never turned the report over. Ought to get rid of the damn thing.

But, after all, he was under assignment to study the so called New Resistance. The NR existed—so it said—to oppose the Second Alliance and “the conspiracy for which it is a façade.” And any information on the Second Alliance could conceivably apply to his investigation of the NR. He could read Kupperbind’s report. Skeptically. Perhaps pan a few small nuggets of useful information out of the silt of Kupperbind’s paranoia.

He was startled by a buzzing from his console, almost jumped out of his chair.

Words flashed for his attention on the screen:
Incoming call, switch to one mode for receive.

Stoner punched for One Mode. The file page on the screen compressed to a thin line; the line expanded to become something else entirely. A man’s face. Unger.

The TV image of Unger smiled. Squat, almost jolly face, laugh lines around the eyes, always smiling when he first saw you, hail-fellow-well-met. Always wanted something. Stoner had never trusted Unger, but Unger was section chief, so Stoner smiled and said, “What can I do for you?”

“You could switch on visual so I can see if it’s you or somebody doin’ an impersonation!”

“Sorry.” He tapped transmission tie-in with the webcam.

“There you are, by God! How’s it hangin’, Kimosabe?”

Stoner winced inwardly. Kimosabe. Where’d he get that stuff? Something to do with being playful about Stoner’s “rodeo drag.”

“Fine. Great.”

“Good—well, hey, Kimosabe, we’re just trying to get some loose ends tied up here, and we find, going over the checklist for Recalls, that you never turned in that File-178 Report-43 we asked for. Says here you promised to bring it in yourself.”

Stoner felt a chill at the synchronicity of it. File-178 Report-43 was the Kupperbind report. Should have just done a scan on it. “Well, I’ll look it up, see what I got. I don’t know as I have it; they maybe forgot to check it off when I brought it in. I’ll see.”

Unger’s video grin melted into something flat. “Say there, Kimosabe, we got a Focus One on the NR. That file concerns the NR; we need it in here right away. We’re just anal about proceedure, when it comes to Focus One.”

The file’s more about the Second Alliance, Stoner thought. But he said, “If I’ve got it, you’ll sure get it. Right away.”

Unger nodded. Stoner hoped Unger was going to break the connection, but after a moment of silent two-dimensional staring, he said, “I wonder if we could take a quick meeting, say in the commissary in about an hour. We need to talk. Things are moving. Changes coming down. We need to know which side of the changes you stand on, Corte.”

“Uh . . . I’ve got a lot of . . . ”

“Seriously, Stoner. The commissary. One hour.”

“Uh—okay. I’m there.”

Unger broke the connection. Stoner thought: We need to talk?

Southeastern France.

Claire almost shot Torrence when he turned the corner. He saw her shudder, the color draining from her face. She lowered her rifle.

Claire and Danco were crouched in the frozen rubble between two sheer rock walls, under the boulder they’d used for surface-to-air launching. A curtain fringe of thin ice hung in little gray spears down the shadowed rock walls beside them. Both Claire and Danco were haggard; Claire was trembly with cold or fear. Torrence wanted to go to her, put his arms around her, but he thought she might resent being comforted in front of Danco, so he held back.

“Your shotgun,” Danco said. “Damaged? It works no more?”

“It works too well,” Torrence said. He looked up, hearing a fresh spate of gunfire. Unconsciously he’d turned so that his back was to the rock, Claire and Danco on the left, a view down the crooked corridor of chill stone to his right.

Movement down there. Hard to make out clearly in the shadow what it was. But in that direction . . . 

“Here they come,” he muttered.

Danco’s walkie-talkie was nattering at him. He pressed it to his ear, frowning, then nodded. “Okay.
Sí.
” He put the walkie-talkie back on his belt and told them, “We regroup around the cave. The SA, they are pressing. They are coming in to finish us.”

A cold, weary late afternoon. The sunlight streaking pale between the megalithic stones imparted no warmth. About twenty guerrillas were posted at the openings between the rocks, and in the approaches to the cave from the sides. Two more NR—Sahid and the fatalistic Sortonne—crouched in the crater atop the square boulder, a little bit in advance of the main group; Sortonne with a rocket launcher, Fahid beside him to help reload.

It was quiet. The enemy had moved into position, probably deploying seeker missiles, maybe light artillery.

Steinfeld’s command group squatted on its haunches, mouths and nostrils trailing steam as they talked, hands tucked in their armpits for warmth.

Steinfeld saying, “ . . . the extractor makes it that way. The only course we can take from here. We hit them with everything, we force their hand . . . ”

Steinfeld hesitated, his mask of calm slipping. It hurt Torrence to see it. He relied on Steinfeld’s courage, his seeming indefatigability. But being cornered one too many times had worn Steinfeld down.

Steinfeld looked at the ground, and when he looked up at them again, his gaze was broken. He couldn’t look directly at any of them. He said, “I must insist that you kill me the moment the line breaks. Be sure to shoot me in the head, several times. A shot to the body won’t necessarily . . . ” He cleared his throat.

Levassier turned away, cursing in French.

Torrence felt leaden. Like he’d never get warm again. They’d patched him up, but he was suffering from blood loss, dizzy when he moved too quickly. It didn’t matter, obviously. He looked up toward the line at the edge of the amphitheater area around the cave mouth—a woman there, an NR Guerilla, toppled over backward. They heard the distorted crack of the gunshot a half second later, echoing
shuh-shuh-shuh
through the twisted corridors of rock. The woman lay on her back, staring sightlessly, a bullet hole in her forehead. It was Angeline, someone he scarcely knew. Steinfeld was bellowing orders, and Torrence automatically went into position with the others. Claire came up beside him, with the black woman, Lila, and they crouched behind a block of stone the size and shape of an overturned credit-transfer booth.