Empire Games Series, Book 1(23)
(The warehouse itself was empty, seemingly abandoned when the business that had previously occupied it went bust. Only a rectangular area on the stained concrete floor, marked out with duct tape, would tell an informed observer that there was anything out of the ordinary about it. That, and the fact that anyone reviewing the previous day’s camera footage of the front and back of the building in search of Hulius’s arrival would have a fruitless task.)
Every stage of this type of insertion was hazardous. The warehouse might have been let to a new tenant in the week since the preliminary reconnaissance designated it as an entry point. Or some unfortunate event might have attracted unwanted police or DHS attention. Once one was out of the entry building, the risks continued. Unable to use a trackable phone or GPS device, Hulius had memorized the neighborhood—a good solution, but only effective as long as he stuck to known territory. And he had to keep moving confidently, for he couldn’t stop and consult a paper map. If his motion kinematics seemed weird, software running on the sensors embedded in the street signs on major roads would notice and call the cops. He’d then face a search for alcohol or drugs. This could not be allowed.
In this world-walker-aware city, there were cameras with motion tracking firmware at every major intersection. They were designed to spot a sudden appearance out of thin air: so transfer had to be effected inside a disused building. Hulius’s managers back in the Commonwealth didn’t think the DHS was capable of monitoring every doorway in the United States for foot traffic: only federal buildings and security zones like airports had that level of surveillance. But sooner or later the feds would start clamping down on pedestrians and cyclists who had no radio-frequency devices like phones or ID cards. It would make covert operations infinitely harder. At present it was still possible for a courier to dip into the quiet backstreets of a big city for a couple of hours without courting disaster, but the end of Commonwealth intelligence operations on US soil was clearly in sight: the USA was already a harder nut for foreign infiltrators to crack than the Soviet bloc had ever been.
At the end of the street, Hulius stopped at the four-way and diligently checked for oncoming traffic. Most New York cyclists didn’t bother—it wasn’t necessary, now that anticollision radar was mandatory on cars and trucks—but he was patient. An accidental collision with another cyclist or a hot-wired car would be a mission kill at best. If it put him in the back of an ambulance, it would most likely prove fatal: he’d have to use the suicide capsule he carried in a false wisdom tooth.
He pedaled on across an avenue and took a left, then wobbled slowly uphill along the main road for a block. A few streets later, he reached his destination and dismounted. He linked the bike to a railing and pretended to arm the bike lock, then (after looking for passersby) turned his reversible jacket inside out and put it on again. Pocketing his conspicuous glasses, he walked round the corner and straight into a cheap local diner.
His contact was waiting in a seat facing the front door, toying with the wreckage of a burrito and a bottle of juice. The bottle was positioned to the left of her plate: a simple sign that meant, I am not under duress. She was around fifty, thin-faced, her black hair scraped back in a severe bun: she looked like a tired office worker. Hulius paid her no obvious attention, and she gave no sign of recognition. Instead, he walked to the counter and bought tostadas and a root beer. He turned to casually survey the diner as if looking for empty seats, then carried his portion over to her table and sat down facing her.
“Good morning, Ms. Milan.”
She nodded politely. “Always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Jefferson. How did the ball game go?”
“We won, 4-2.” He’d noticed no sign of surveillance on his way to the meet. The set of her shoulders relaxed infinitesimally. “We have maybe fifteen minutes—no longer. It’s not safe: they’re rolling out more and more networked cameras.” The safe duration for contact was narrowing all the time.
“Damn.” Her expression was pinched. Too much tension there, he thought. He’d known Paulie for years, almost since before the Clan survivor’s exile in the Commonwealth: she’d been a protegé of Miriam herself. “That’s not good. I’m not sure I can cope if it falls below five minutes.”
He took a mouthful of soda. As ever, it tasted oddly alien—almost familiar, but not quite right, too sweet. It was the high-fructose corn syrup they put in everything, he decided; it tasted weird if you were used to cane sugar. “You don’t have to. You do a good and valuable job here, but if you think they’re onto you, or if it’s too stressful, all you have to do is say so: we can arrange an extraction to time line three whenever you want. There’s no reason for you to risk detection.”
She shook her head, very slightly. “I have family. Two nieces and a nephew who just married.” She paused. “Also, this is my country. It’s been good to my family, and good for me: I can’t just leave.”
He put the drink down, allowed his bag to slide down to the floor by the side of the booth. “Nevertheless, the offer remains open. She said I was to remind you that extraction is the lesser evil, compared to spending the rest of your life in a supermax prison cell for assisting supposed terrorists.” He paused. “I don’t like to be the bringer of bad news, but the risk level is becoming unacceptable. We’re going to have to stop meeting like this soon, possibly in as little as three months. We can work out another protocol for risk mitigation in the short term that’ll keep things going a bit longer, but…” He shrugged.