"There are?" Mike knew better than to get angry. "What are they expecting to see?"
"Visitors who don't arrive through the front door." Smith slung one leg over the arm of the recliner and leaned on it, inspecting Mike pensively.
Oh, right." For a second, Mike felt the urge to kick his earlier self for passing on absolutely everything he'd learned. The impulse passed: he'd been fever-ridden, and anyway it was what he was supposed to do. But still, if he hadn't done so, he wouldn't be stuck out here under virtual house arrest. He might be back in hospital, with no Worries about groceries. And besides, Smith had a point. You might want to warn them I'm expecting a housekeeper to show tomorrow-she drops by a couple of times a week."
"I'll tell them." Smith paused. "As it happens, I know you're not being listened in on, unless you lift the receiver on that phone-I signed the wiretap request myself. There's stuff we need to talk about, and this place is more private than my office, if you follow my drift."
"I'm not being listened in on right now? Suits me."| Mike leaned back in the sofa. "Talk away. Sorry if I don't, uh, if I'm not too focused: I feel like shit."
"Yes, well." Smith glanced at him. "That's why you're on sick leave. You may be interested to know that your story checks out: that is, Beckstein's mother disappeared six months ago. Her house is still there, the bills are being paid on time, but there's nobody home. We haven't gotten a trace on her income stream so far; her credit cards and bank account are ordinary enough, but the deposits are coming in from an offshore bank account in Liechtenstein and that's turning out to be hard to trace. Anyway, I think we can confirm that she's one of them." He stood up again and paced over to the kitchen door then back, as if his legs were incapable of standing still. "This is a, a tactical mess. We'd hoped to get at least a few successful contacts in place before our ability to operate in fairyland was blown. What this means is that they, uh, Beckstein senior's faction, are going to be alert for informants from now on. On the other hand, if they're willing to talk we've got an-admittedly biased-HUMINT source to develop. Contacts, in other words."
Mike stared at him. Smith was just about sweating bullets. "Who do we talk to in the Middle East?" he asked. "I mean, when we want to know what al-Qaeda is planning?"
"That's a lot more accessible. This, these guys, it's like China in the fifties or sixties." Smith looked as if he was sucking on a lemon. "Look." He picked up the second grocery bag and handed it to Mike. "This stuff is strictly off the books because, unfortunately, we're off the map here, right outside the reservation."
"What- " Mike upended the bag and boxes fell out. A mobile phone, ammunition, a pistol. "The fuck?"
"Glock 18, like their own people use. The phone was bought anonymously for cash. Listen." Smith hunkered down in front of him, still radiating extreme discomfort. "The phone's preprogrammed with Dr. James's private number. This is running right from the top. If you have to negotiate with them, James can escalate you all the way to Daddy Warbucks."
Mike was impressed, despite himself.
"In case the other faction come calling for you."
Smith took a deep breath. "Find out if GREENSLEEVES was blowing smoke. If all he had was a couple of slugs of hot metal, that's still bad-but right now it would be really good if we could call off the NIRT investigation. On the other hand, you might want to point out to the Beckstein faction what would happen if one of our cities goes up."
"Huh. What would happen? What could we do, realistically?" Mike stared at him.
Smith paused for a few seconds. "I'm just guessing here, you understand. I'm not privy to that information. But my guess is that we would be very, very angry-for all of about thirty minutes." He swallowed. "And then we'd retaliate in kind, Mike. The SSADM backpack nukes have been out of inventory since the early seventies and the W54 cores were retired by eighty-nine, but they don't have to stay that way. The schematics are still on file and if I were a betting man I'd place a C-note on Pantex being able to run one up in a few weeks, if they haven't done so already. Daddy Warbucks and the Wolfman are both gung-ho about developing a new generation of nukes. It could get really ugly really fast, Mike. A smuggler's war, tit for tat. But we'd win, because they've got better logistics but we've got a choke hold on the weapons supply. And if it comes to it, I don't think we'd hold back from making it a war of extermination. It's not hard to stick a cobalt jacket on a bomb when there's zero risk of the fallout coming home."
