Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(13)

I’d been sitting about ten minutes when Silverman arrived, red-faced and sweaty. He dropped into the seat beside me, ran his hand over his thinning hair.

“State of the traffic, bike’s as good as a car in this town.” He drew a breath. “You’ve got the cables, by the way.”

I’d stuffed the plastic bag under my seat.

“Flask, too,” he said.

“You can have the cables. The flask, I’ll keep. In case we got something.”

“Ah.” He sat back. “So we might have done it?”

He seemed genuinely thrilled.

“Don’t know. Not hopeful, to be honest.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“They said she was alive when she came in. That’s if they’re telling me the truth.”

I did not trust doctors. I did not trust nurses. And receptionists, I trusted even less than that.

Silverman clicked his tongue. Then he reached under my chair, pulling out the cables bag. He began to disentangle the mess, the wires pooling round his feet. This brought some odd looks from the others in the waiting room.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’m grateful for your help. You were actually pretty good back there, you know? But if you’re not Registry, how’ve you got the gear?”

“Oh—that.” He was stretching out the cable like a yarn of wool, winding it between his hand and elbow. He broke off to reach into his pocket and pass me a card.

I read: Paul Silverman, filmmaker, educational consultant, museum displays, film and photography, design, text There was a quote from Aristotle (at least, he got the credit for it): Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

“Hall of Science,” he said.

“What?”

“Flushing Meadows?”

“What about them?”

“Museum, you know? It’s an exhibition. ‘We Got the Power.’ Shitty title. Anyway. I’m working on it. Part of a team. Design, installations. All that.”

“And the Registry’s just . . . handing out equipment?”

“They’re financing the thing. Well, mostly them. The city’s putting in, and a couple of private trusts—”

“Oh, I get it. In my country, we call that, ‘advertising’.”

He smiled. “Sponsorship,” he countered.

“And it’s going to be fair and unbiased and well-researched and tell you that the Registry offers the safest and most viable source of electric power, sustainable, clean, and all the rest?”

He nodded.

“Thought it might.”

He paused a moment. Then he said, “You don’t believe it?”

“Oh, I believe it. Couldn’t not, could I? Besides,” I said, “you don’t want Fukoshima in your backyard, do you?” I shrugged. “You’ll need to find a new flask, by the way.”

“You said. Newark, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Where it’s decanted.”

“You’ve got the terms. It’s funny, though. Only a few years back we were trying to keep it all hush-hush. Thought if people knew what we were up to, there’d be trouble. Specially over here . . .”

“You’re kind of an old hand at this, aren’t you?”

“Don’t rub it in.”

“Seen some changes.”

The inner doors opened, and I looked up, thinking it might be something about Melody; but the man in the white coat just whispered to the receptionist, then disappeared again.

“You know,” said Silverman, “if we could get together sometime? I know this is not—I mean, it’s a stressful time, but, you know, I’ve heard all the official stuff, and to get it from a Field Op—that perspective . . .”

I wondered how he managed to stay so fired up, at this ungodly hour of the night.

He said, “I hear you guys can be pretty . . . unconventional, yeah?”

“We’re that, all right.”

“You don’t toe the party line. I was actually . . . warned about you. Kind of. Told if any of you turned up, you probably weren’t reliable.”

A young woman in a wheelchair glided by, pushed by a guy in scrubs. None of the staff here was old. I wondered what the burnout rate was. How long you could handle it. And whether it was any easier than my job.

Silverman said, “That sort of piqued my interest . . . ?”

He waited for me to say something. I didn’t, and he went on, “See, this is my third month doing this, and you’re the first, the only Field Op I have had the chance to sit and talk with.”

“We move around a lot.”

“Yeah. Always moving on, right?” He put a hand up to his brow, to hair that was already too far gone to need brushing from his face. “It’s kind of like . . . meeting Indiana Jones, you know?”

“Is it?”

“Kidding, kidding.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “Funny joke . . .”





Chapter 12

Death and Breakfast




She didn’t make it.

Melody.

That’s when the joking stopped.

I kept looking around under the sickly lighting, wanting to move on, go somewhere, anywhere.