Reach For the Spy (25 page)

I swore and lurched,
swiping my chin in an attempt to keep the dribbles off my
T-shirt.

“Sit.” Kane pried the
bottle out of my hand and lowered me to the floor with my back
against the corridor wall. “Try it now.” He handed me the bottle
again, and I managed to drink some by steadying it with both
hands.

“Thanks.” I sipped
again, and he slid down the wall to sit companionably beside me on
the floor.

Spider emerged from the
men’s room and surveyed us quizzically for a few seconds before
taking a seat on the floor across the corridor from us.

We sat in silence while
I drank my juice. A few moments later we all glanced up at the
sound of a door closing as Stemp stepped out of his office. He
hesitated at the sight of us sitting in the hallway, then walked
down toward us, his face unreadable as always.

He stopped in front of
Kane. “Your requisition is approved, and the equipment is ready
downstairs. You can pick it up whenever you want it.” He eyed Kane
expressionlessly for a few seconds. “I hope your judgement is
sound.” He turned and vanished into the stairwell. The steel door
clanged behind him.

Kane offered no
explanation, and I didn’t care enough to ask. The tremors were
starting to subside as my blood sugar equalized, but I was still
starving. I finally summoned up the courage to look at my watch.
After eight o’clock. Jeez. My stomach growled.

I heaved to my feet and
the other two followed suit.

“Sorry, Aydan, but we
still need to debrief,” Kane said.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I’m
going to go wash off the orange juice, and I need to grab a cereal
bar. And then I have to go back into the sim again.”

Kane was already
shaking his head and I held up a hand to forestall his objection.
“We’ll talk about it in a minute,” I told him firmly, and ducked
back into the bathroom.

When I returned to the
office, Spider and Kane were snacking, too. I tore the wrapper off
my bar and bit into it ravenously as Kane looked up.

“So what the hell was
that?” he demanded.

“Sorry, I panicked,” I
mumbled. “Hang on.” I gulped down the too-large mouthful and chased
it with a swig of orange juice, then sank into the couch and took
another, smaller bite. “Just let me get this down…”

We all munched in
silence for a few minutes. I swallowed the last of the bar and
leaned back on the couch.

“Okay.” I sighed.
“Sorry I vanished like that. I should have let you know what was
happening, but I read that document and freaked out.”

“What was it?” Kane
asked.

“Somebody was notifying
Fuzzy Bunny that I’m still alive, and that I have network
access.”

Both men jerked forward
in their chairs. “Who? How far did it go?” Kane snapped.

“I don’t know who it
was. I found it in three separate locations and destroyed it. I had
to search every single path on every single synced site. That’s why
it took so long, and that’s why I didn’t dare waste any time. I’m
pretty sure I got all the copies, and I’m pretty sure nobody had
read the message yet.”

“Pretty sure?” Kane’s
shoulders bunched under the snug T-shirt. “How sure is pretty sure?
If that went anywhere in Fuzzy Bunny’s organization, you’re as good
as dead.”

I ran my hands over my
face. “Dead, I wouldn’t mind so much. But I’m thinking I wouldn’t
be that lucky.”

“No, you’re probably
right,” Kane agreed slowly. “Captured and tortured, more
likely.”

“Don’t say that!”
Spider protested. He turned haunted eyes to Kane. “You wouldn’t let
that happen.”

“Sorry, Webb,” Kane
said regretfully. “You know I’d do anything in my power not to let
it happen. And you know it happened anyway, last time.”

“Anyway,” I
interjected, trying to cheer up the discussion, “Pretty sure in
this case means almost certain. Ninety-nine percent. But that’s why
I have to go back into the sim tonight and make sure there are no
other bombshells lurking in those files. It was just dumb luck that
I got to that one before anybody opened it. Who knows what else is
in there. That could have just been one of many.”

There was a short,
dejected silence. Guess I hadn’t cheered the discussion up that
much.

“All right,” Kane said.
“I hate to say it, but you’re right. The sooner you get back into
the sim and read those documents, the better. Tell me when you’re
ready.”

I rose. “I’m just going
to go and pee again first. Just in case.”

A short time later, I
stepped back into the virtual network. The food had helped, and the
sim only wavered slightly while I headed for the virtual file room.
The image stabilized as Kane appeared, too.

“Thanks for being
here,” I told him. “It really helps when you hold the sim
still.”

He grinned. “Just don’t
think about pigs.”

A faint but pungent
odour drifted to my nose, and I glared at him. “Stop that.”

We stepped into the
file room, and I buried myself in the documents again.

After an interminable
time, I laid aside the last one with a sigh. “All clear.” The file
room wavered, walls melting like hot candle wax.

Kane stepped quickly
over and grasped my arm. “Let’s go.”

My eyes burned. Kane
flung a glass of ice water in my face, and I gasped and sputtered.
“What the...”

He dragged me along the
virtual corridor. “Your eyes were on fire,” he muttered. He forged
through tall reeds and reeking swamp. The path in front of his feet
stayed solid, but I sank up to my waist, the saw-like edges of the
reeds slashing my skin. His grip bruised my arm as he dragged me
along.

“Come on, Aydan, help
me out here.” He pulled me out of the swamp with a sucking sound
and placed me on the path ahead of him. “Walk.”

I squelched forward,
expecting a solid path with all my might.

I stopped dead.
Apparently I had also expected snakes. Lots of them.

“Oh, for...” Kane
shouldered me aside. His flamethrower belched fire and smoke. The
snakes burned and shrivelled. He turned back to me and before I
could react he slung me over his shoulder and ran for the portal.
We stepped through just as blackness filled the void.

I sprawled on the sofa
and cursed feebly until the pain subsided to tolerable levels. Then
I flung an arm across my face and groaned for a while, just for
variety. Finally I shut up and hauled myself into a semblance of
sitting position.

“Well, that was fun,” I
croaked. “Let’s do that again soon. Not.”

Kane was massaging his
temples, too. “Not,” he agreed. “Do you think you’re in the
clear?”

“Yes. But I don’t know
for how long. I wonder how long it’ll take before whoever it was
realizes that their message never arrived.”

Kane shrugged. “No way
to tell. Is there any way you can set an alert if that file gets
re-sent?”

I laid my head back on
the sofa and frowned at the ceiling. “I think so. If I go in again
and just...”

“No. You’re done. So am
I. I was having trouble holding it at the end, too,” Kane said. “We
can’t take the chance tonight.”

Spider spoke up
hesitantly. “I think I can do it from the external network
interface. While you were busy in the sim, I was analyzing the
file, trying to figure out where it came from. I could probably
modify your program.”

“Do it,” Kane
ordered.

I looked at my watch
and groaned. “It’s nearly midnight. You’d better take a break,
Spider.”

“No, I’m okay.” He
grinned. “I want to get in and play with that program. I’m used to
being up half the night gaming anyway.”

I squinted at him. He
looked fresh as a daisy, and I rubbed my aching forehead. Oh, to be
twenty-six again.

“Let’s go,” Kane broke
into my dull thoughts. “We’ve got one more stop to make before I
take you home.”

“Will the festivities
never end?” I dragged myself up off the couch and plodded after him
out the door.

On the main floor, Kane
stopped at another heavy steel door and stooped for the retinal
scan. I watched him warily. “Is this another time delay?”

“No.”

The door released and I
followed him into a room lined with lockers of various sizes.

I gazed around. “A
changing room?”

“Not exactly.” He
pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and consulted it for a
moment. Then he moved to one of the lockers and swiped his security
fob across its prox pad. The door unlatched, and he reached in to
extract a carton about the size of a shoebox. He carried it over to
a small counter and opened it.

“For you.” He turned
and handed me a pistol.

“Uh.” I regarded the
small black gun open-mouthed. “What...?”

“It’s a Glock G26. A
Baby Glock. For concealed carry.” Kane delved into the box again.
“Here’s a concealed waist holster, and an ankle holster. You should
use the waist holster whenever you can. It’s easier to access. But
the ankle holster is easier to conceal in the summertime when
you’re not wearing a jacket.”

He pointed out features
as he spoke. “It’s a 9mm. Ten-shot magazine, standard Glock
safe-action trigger, and the sights are good. It’s an accurate gun
for its size, but you’ll notice it kicks a bit more than the
full-size model. You’re strong, you shouldn’t have any difficulty
with it.”

I gazed blankly up at
him. “I don’t have a permit for this. And it’s illegal to carry a
concealed weapon.”

Kane reached into the
box again. “Your permit. And your concealed carry license.” He
handed them to me.

“But... I didn’t think
there was any such thing as a concealed carry license in
Canada.”

“Officially and
practically, no, not for the general public. But they do exist. For
people like you and me.”

“But...” I tried to get
my tired brain to process the new information. “But... what am I
supposed to do with this?”

He gave me a wry smile.
“Typically, you’d use it to shoot somebody who was trying to kill
you. That’s been happening frequently enough that Stemp agreed you
should carry.”

“But... what if I shoot
somebody?”

“That’s the general
idea,” he said patiently.

“But...” I stopped and
shook my head vigorously in the hope of kick-starting my brain.
“What I meant was, what if I get it wrong? What if I shoot somebody
who isn’t Fuzzy Bunny? Like, what if I’d been carrying this a
couple of nights ago, and I shot Bill Harks? He’s just a local guy,
not a spy. There’d be all kinds of trouble. You couldn’t just cover
that up.”

“Bill Harks was trying
to kill you. Your primary objective; in fact, your orders; are to
stay alive. At all costs.”

“I don’t think he was
trying to kill me,” I argued. “It wasn’t like it was life or
death.”

“Aydan.” He frowned
down at me. “I saw the video. That kick he landed on your ribs, if
it had been full-force the way he’d planned, and if it hit you in
the head? You could easily have died. Or been brain-injured.”

He looked into my eyes.
“Your responsibility is to stay alive. If you’d had this gun a
couple of nights ago, your responsibility would have been to shoot
Harks if you couldn’t scare him off. To disable, if possible. To
kill, if necessary. Let us worry about any cover-ups that need to
be done.”

“But what if I get it
wrong? What if I shoot some poor shmo who just happened to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time?” I gazed up at him. “I can’t do
this.”

“Aydan, I know you can.
I’ve seen you do it.”

“That was different,” I
mumbled. “I knew they were Fuzzy Bunny. You were there to tell
me.”

Kane laid his hand on
my shoulder. “Aydan, I know you won’t make a mistake. I’m not
afraid you’ll shoot someone by accident. I’m more worried you won’t
be prepared to shoot someone when you need to.”

I stood for a few
moments trying to absorb the magnitude of what he was saying. My
mind steadfastly refused to deal with it. I sighed. Okay, stick to
practicalities for now.

“I’ll need to practice
with it. Do I just go to the store and pick up ammo?”

“No.” He smiled. “The
whole point of carrying a concealed weapon is that nobody knows you
have it. We’ll issue you ammo. Just ask whenever you need it.”

“Okay, I’ll need a box
for tomorrow, then.”

Other than the prospect
of having to shoot somebody, I was actually pretty excited about
the gun itself. I love guns. This one was a little beauty.

“I’ve never seen a
handgun this small before.” I grinned up at him. “Is there a firing
range I should use, or should I just take it out to the back
forty?”

“There’s a firing range
downstairs in the secured area, but if you’ve got a safe place on
your farm, you could use that. Just take another gun with you so
you can explain away the sound of the shots. Remember, nobody can
know that you have this.”

“Right.” I thought a
bit more. “So when do you want me to start carrying it? And when
should I carry it?”

“As soon as you feel
comfortable using it, start carrying it. And carry it with you at
all times.” He grinned. “Take it to bed with you, too. It’s a
little more effective than a crowbar.”

“Yeah, but you don’t
get a second chance,” I argued. “If I’d had this when you showed up
at my place, it would’ve been game over for you.”

Kane sobered. “You’re
right. This is dangerous. That’s why there are only a handful of
these licenses in existence. I know you well enough to believe you
won’t make a mistake.” He repacked everything into the cardboard
carton and handed it to me. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

When we pulled up in
front of my house, Germain stepped onto the front porch, hands on
hips.

“You’re out long past
your curfew, young lady,” he teased as I trailed up the steps.