Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(36)

“You told him I’d be here.”

He shuffled his feet. “I, um, might have. I thought, maybe, if he knew there was a Registry presence, he’d take it more seriously. I was, you know, kind of surprised to talk to him, to be honest. That’s rare. And he’s notoriously, ah . . .” he spent a moment looking for the word, “difficult.”

“He’s a crook,” said Angel.

“Well. Yeah.”

“This guy,” she told me, “Eddie Senior, or whatever he is—he’s like the Jeffrey Dahmer of businessmen. Crawled out from under more lawsuits than anybody in America, or so he claims.”

“Is this true?”

Silverman nodded.

“His big trick,” Angel said, “is, you work for him, you do some job—then he tells you he’s not going to pay. Or he’s going to pay you half. Whatever. He’s got money. Means his lawyers can go longer than yours can. Most people just give up.”

“Charming. And he’s the guy you want to fund you?”

“He was . . . a possibility,” said Silverman. “But, like I say, he’s kind of difficult.”

He pretended to adjust his camera settings.

“You told him that you’d got connections, though? In the Registry.”

“Um.”

“And let me guess. Your connections gave you my itinerary. Before they’d even given it to me. And you gave it to Ballington. We getting warm now?”

“Well.” His feet were doing their very own little soft-shoe shuffle, while the rest of him sat, frozen stiff.

“It might be worse than that,” he said at last.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I might have implied I was, ah, kind of a colleague. Not in Field Ops, obviously. I mean, I didn’t say it outright. But he, he might have inferred . . . And I might have got you sent here. Can’t say for sure. Might have, ah, suggested—at the Registry—just told them it was, you know. Kind of a thing here.”

“Kind of a thing.”

“Um . . . like I could see, you know, the drama. The potential. And . . .”

“The Registry, and the Ballingtons.”

“Look,” he said. “It’s tough, being freelance. Trying to make the funding. You’ve got two seconds till they put the phone down, and you just say anything to keep their interest, and . . .”

“You get the money?”

“No.”

“Oh dear.”

“In fact, till today, I thought they’d just forgotten about it.” He managed a weak smile. “Guess not, huh?”





Chapter 33

All in the Prep




You learn to be practical. You learn to say, fuck it.

It wasn’t that I needed Silverman. I could have done the job with Angel—I could have done it on my own, if I’d have had to. But another pair of hands would make it quicker, smoother, and I reckoned he took orders well enough.

I almost cut him loose. I thought about it. Then, like I say: fuck it.

There wasn’t going to be a whole lot of precision about this one. First the perimeter, then we’d block off the pond, piece by piece. Normally you’d set up a series of concentric rings, and just sort of chase the little bugger into the flask. But water spread the charge. So we’d have to use that, if we could, and take the place in sections. There’d be no prodding and teasing with the thing, no trying to maneuver it into position. Only bam, bam, bam, shutting off one part of the pond after another. The flask at the far end, ready for the god.

We’d use one of the boats, but the cables would be underwater, and even in the daylight that would have been a problem, trying to get everything in place, not too near, not too far, not crossing over one another. I was wondering—yet again—if it was time to quit the whole idea. Then Silverman said, “Helium balloons.”

“What?”

“You want markers, right? So you tie balloons every few feet. Pond’s maybe four or five feet deep. You won’t see the cables, but you’ll see the balloons.”

I thought about it for a while. It sounded good.

“You trying to make amends?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “I’m trying to make a movie. You don’t do this, then what’s my movie about?”



We bought helium balloons.

In England, I’d have had no idea where to get such things. Here, there was a whole shop full of them. The guy just sat there, filling them up for us. We bought wedding and happy birthday and get well soon. We bought you’re the greatest! and be mine! and hey you! We bought life is like a balloon and choose life and love life and life is what happens while you’re making other plans. We bought sorry and excuse me, I’m an asshole. We bought whoop, we bought big whoop, we bought whoop. We bought no dancing, no fornicating. We bought Honda Seville. We bought kiss me I’m Armenian. We bought St. Pat’s, Bierkeller, Hawaii 5–0. The shopkeeper raised his brows but mostly he was just counting the bucks. Then we prepared the cables just as Silverman had said and went out to the diner and I kept an eye open for Eddie’s limo but it didn’t show.

Silverman returned to his van. Angel and I went back to our motel bed, staring at the ceiling, holding hands, trying to sleep.