The Affinities (32 page)

“Just up around the bend ahead,” Jolinda said. “You'll see the house once we pass that stand of oaks.”

“They're Hets,” I said. “They won't do anything violent unless they've cleared it with their bosses.”

“That might be true of most Hets,” Trevor said. “On a statistical basis. But you'll be dealing with, like, one guy. Maybe somebody on the far end of the Het curve. Somebody willing to take action on his own hook.”

“There!” Jolinda exclaimed. “See it?”

Trev slowed down as the farmhouse came into view. From this distance it looked like any of a half dozen other properties we had passed. A two-story wood-frame house maybe fifty or sixty years old, painted a bilious, weathered green. Gaps on top where shingles had fallen from the roof. Sagging front porch. Wild oaks on the south side of it; on the north, a few acres of patchy scrub that someone might have tried to farm, once, long ago, in a fit of unjustified optimism. Surrounding all this, a chain-link fence on which signs had been posted:

NO TRESPASSING OR LOITERING

VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

“It's also possible I can talk Geddy out of there. Maybe they reconsidered the whole thing. Maybe they got a call when the telecom was up, telling them things had changed, they don't need him anymore.”

“Like the way you talked to Amanda,” Trevor said.

“Right.”

The car came to a stop at the end of the laneway that led to the farmhouse, tires crunching on gravel. I took a long look down the laneway to the house, five dark windows facing us: two on the ground floor, two above, and a tiny dormer window in what must have been the attic. Probably a Het guy in each one, watching. Trev said, “There are three vehicles parked in back of it, four Het SUVs and the car Geddy was driving when they took him. We figure at least eight potential hostiles inside. You might not see all of them, so don't make assumptions. You have the radio?”

One of Shannon's walkie-talkies, strapped to my belt. We had arranged this before we got in the car. Fifteen minutes after I gained admission to the farmhouse, Trevor would make contact by radio. I would say certain words, or I would not; and as a result certain things would happen, or they wouldn't.

“Best get on down there if you're going,” Jolinda said from the backseat.

I opened the door and got out and closed the door behind me. I felt the wind on my face, moist from the morning's rain. I heard the branches of the oaks groaning in the wind, the spastic idle of the car's engine. My legs felt too heavy to move but I moved them anyway. I began to walk down the graveled drive to the sagging farmhouse porch, thinking about the people watching me from the lightless mirrors of the windows, wondering which of those rooms Geddy was in.

The porch was in even worse shape than it had looked from the road. The plank steps bowed under my feet, elastic with rot. A naked lightbulb above the door was half filled with rainwater and rust. The door itself was subtly askew on its hinges, and it opened as I raised my fist to knock. A man stood in the shadows behind it. “Come on in, Mr. Fisk,” he said.

I recognized the voice: it was the man I had spoken to over the radio.

And as I stepped inside, I recognized the face.

 

CHAPTER 23

At least I thought I recognized him. The face was familiar, but I couldn't connect it with a name or a concrete memory. He was a tall man, white, probably in his forties, with a gym-rat body, bald head, and angular cheekbones that made him look faintly Slavic. He wore jeans and a black sweatshirt, plain but clean. His lips were compressed in a smile that verged on a sneer. He stood back and waved me in.

Where had I seen his face before?

Inside the farmhouse was a large square room, stairs leading to the second story, an arch opening into what appeared to be a kitchen. The floor was wood, floorboards scuffed and muddied to a smoky black. The walls were covered in scabbed green utility paint. The furniture consisted of a worn sofa, six plastic kitchen chairs, and a woodstove ticking away in one corner of the room.

Assuming the tall guy was the boss, three of his subordinates were also present in the room: one next to the window, one blocking the way to the kitchen, and a third (a woman) perched on the stairs. They all carried holstered handguns, and they looked at me with expressions ranging from contempt to indifference.

“Sit down, Adam,” the tall guy said. “Might as well make yourself comfortable while we discuss things.”

“There's nothing to discuss until I know Geddy is safe.”

“Okay, that's understandable. Maggie? Want to bring our guest on down?”

The woman nodded and stood and trudged upstairs.

“I'd offer you refreshments but we're on slightly short rations here. So who's waiting for you in the car? Your friend Trevor? That local woman who runs Gizmos on Main Street? Smart of her to dole out radios like that. Working the tranche, right? But we have friends in town, too. People who might notice something like a local Tau and some strange man hauling armloads of walkie-talkies out the back door of an electronics store.”

I said nothing. He shrugged. “Go on,” he said, “sit down,” waving his hand at a chair, and under the cuff of his sweatshirt I caught sight of a Het tattoo, small and black. A bisected rectangle, like a cartoon drawing of a sash window.

And then I realized: No, I hadn't
seen
his face before.

I had
drawn
it.

*   *   *

The woman came back downstairs with Geddy behind her and another Het guy taking up the rear, as if they were afraid he'd make a run for it. Not that he seemed likely to do any such thing.

Geddy wore the clothes he'd had on when he left the house a day ago: linen slacks, khaki-green cotton shirt, a pair of ratty sneakers. He looked as grim as a prisoner on his way to the gallows. But he stopped moving the moment he spotted me. His face went through serial evolutions: he grinned; then he looked confused; then he looked frightened.

“Hey, Geddy,” I said.

“Hey,” he said tentatively.

“You all right? Did these folks hurt you in any way?”

He gave it a moment's thought. “They won't let me leave. They didn't hurt me. But they threatened to.”

“We'll get you out of here,” I said.

“Hold your horses,” the guy with the Het tattoo said. “That's not an established fact just yet. That's what we need to talk about. Sit over there on the sofa, Geddy.” He turned to me. “So did his mother name him after Geddy Lee? From that old-time Canadian band, Rush? Because we asked, but he wouldn't tell us.”

“The name's from his mother's side of the family. Long line of Geddys. How about you? Do you have a name?”

“Call me Tom.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Of course not. And you really need to sit down.”

I sat in the chair next to the woodstove. I crossed my legs and put my left hand on my thigh so I could see my watch without obviously checking it. Five minutes had passed since I had left the car. Ten to go. I said, “There's no point dancing around. Just tell me what you want.”

Tom pulled a chair away from the wall and put it in front of me and sat in it so that our knees were almost touching. When he spoke I could smell his breath, sour and pungent, as if he'd been living on black coffee and brie. “No offense, but you people must be pretty stupid if you don't know what we want.”

“Who's
we
in this case? You? Your tranche? Your sodality? Your Affinity?”

“Come on, Adam. We want your brother Aaron to vote on the Griggs-Haskell bill without interference. We know Tau has a different preference, and we know Tau is in possession of some video footage that might embarrass Aaron right out of the House of Representatives. We suspected something like that before we picked up Geddy, though he was kind enough to confirm it—right, Geddy?”

Geddy inspected the floorboards and said nothing.

“If you're making a threat,” I said, “you need to be explicit about it.”

“You're the folks making a threat. In your case, Adam, a threat against your own brother! We're just responding in kind. So don't talk like you have the moral high ground here.”

I had drawn this man's face, years ago, in Vancouver, working from Rachel Ragland's description of the men who had come to question her. (
Bald as a bottle cap,
she had said,
head like a bread loaf, mouth that opens like a puppet's jaw.
) If this wasn't the same man, it was at least someone who matched both the description and the drawing. Rachel had also mentioned the Het tattoo: same size, same place. So it was no surprise the guy seemed to know me. He worked for Het security, and he could have been keeping a file on me (and Amanda and Damian) ever since the disastrous Vancouver potlatch. He might even have been involved in the murder of Meir Klein.

I said, “You're still not telling me what you want,
Tom
.”

“What we want is a guarantee that Aaron will be allowed to cast his vote unmolested, as God and the electorate intended.”

“God and the electorate and the Het lobby.”

“Sure, if you like. And let me emphasize, we have no interest in harming Geddy. But if you were to walk out that door with him, both Het and Aaron would be hanging in the wind. He's our leverage against Jenny, and without Jenny you have no acceptable case to make. The video by itself won't convince anybody. Jenny's the key. So we need to be in a position to bargain. We need Jenny to know something bad might happen if she joins this conspiracy of yours.”

What this told me was that he didn't know Tau had secured a second affidavit from one of Aaron's recent girlfriends. As far as Tau was concerned, his threat was meaningless. Amanda had made it clear: the video would be released whether or not Jenny consented … and whether or not Geddy was still being held captive.

But I couldn't tell him that. In all likelihood he wouldn't believe me. He certainly wouldn't consider it grounds to give up Geddy. And if, miraculously, he
did
believe me—or if he successfully communicated the news to some higher echelon of the Het command chain—I would have betrayed my own Affinity by revealing the secret.

Of course I had
already
betrayed Tau by lying to Trevor. But I hoped I could be forgiven for that once Geddy was safe. I figured I could make Trevor and Amanda and maybe even Damian understand why I had done what I was doing.

“So,” I said, “what are you proposing? Or do you have to wait for instructions before you can answer that question?”

He smirked. There was a twinkle in his eye: he actually looked
merry.
“That's such a tired stereotype—hierarchical Hets, always need a boss to tell them what to do. Some truth in it, of course. When it comes to collective action, yeah, we make sure we're all on the same page and doing the right thing. Situations like this, field operations? It's not brain surgery. You send along someone who can assume the authority to issue orders. Pending the end of the blackout, I'm that person. If you think we're paralyzed until the phones work, you're not just wrong, you're stupid.”

I looked at my watch. Twelve minutes had passed.

“So,” he said, “all I want to do here is lay out the terms. We can't give you Geddy. Not today. You understand that, right? There's no promise you can make that will secure his release. We need Aaron to vote as intended, and we need to hang on to Geddy until then. What I want to say is, that doesn't have to be a hardship. The vote's scheduled for next week, unless the crisis postpones it, and we can make Geddy perfectly comfortable until then. At an undisclosed location, of course, but somewhere comfortable and private.” He turned to give Geddy a puppet-jawed grin. “Think of it as a vacation. Eat, drink, relax, watch videos until this mess gets resolved. Het picks up the tab, and then you go free.”

Geddy continued inspecting the patch of floor between his sneakers.

I said, “And in exchange?”

“Isn't it obvious? You have people down the road contemplating some kind of rescue attempt. Which, excuse me for saying so, is a truly idiotic idea. Which I imagine you hatched precisely because you're out of contact with the, uh, Tau consensus, or whatever you call it. We both have
so
much to lose from a move like that. Somebody gets hurt. Or there's police involvement, which neither of us wants. Or the conflict escalates out of control. A ridiculous risk.”

“You're asking us to give up everything we've worked for since Klein was killed.”

“What, because of that bill before Congress? I won't kid you; we want Aaron's vote. But we've got our hands on lots of other levers. And even if this vote goes against us, what the fuck does that buy
you
?”

Fifteen minutes. The radio on my belt crackled. I said, “I need to check in with my people.”

The Het guy shrugged and said, “Keep it brief.”

*   *   *

Trev and I had arranged a kind of code. When I answered his call he said, “You've been in there a while—everything okay?”

Which meant the initial stage of the rescue plan had been set into motion and was evolving smoothly. Had there been a problem, he would have asked me what was taking so long. If the plan had been cancelled altogether, he would have told me he was getting impatient.

And I said, “We're still talking.”

Which meant:
Come get us ASAP.

Radio silence followed.

*   *   *

Tom said, “We need to wrap this up. I'm sure you know we have our vehicles behind the house. What's going to happen is, my people will put Geddy in one of those vehicles and we'll convoy down Spindevil to the highway. Nobody gets in the way. Nobody follows us. No contact until Aaron casts his vote, at which time we get in touch and tell you where to find Geddy. The video footage stays locked up in the meantime, or, if it
does
get released, Jenny Fisk tells the press it's not authentic. That's a win-win situation.”