Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(50)

“Kinetic energy. Do you know about kinetic energy, Mr. Copeland?”

He wouldn’t look at me. I said, “A bit.”

“You set a thing in motion. A movement here leads to a movement there. All business is the product of kinetic energy, and the transference of forces, one to another. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“No. No, you don’t.”

He sighted down the cue again but this time, he didn’t take the shot. He said, “I believe the world is on the threshold of a great change.” He straightened up. Only now he turned to me again. His face was red. “That change is coming, if we will or no. This is the crucial thing. Like the Bible says: the old is swept away, the new is here.” He eyed the scattered balls, then picked one, placed his thumb and forefinger on top of it. “The question: can we ride the wave? Because the man who rides the wave will rule the world. No doubt of that.”

He spun the ball. He took away his hand, and the ball rose slowly off the baize, still whirling. I could feel the air begin to quiver. I was hot, much hotter than I should have been.

Like a magician, now, he passed his hand over the spinning ball. It moved faster. It rose another foot, till it was level with his eyes, bobbing there, in midair.

“This,” he told me, “is a parlor trick. You see? It’s not what I demanded or was promised.” He watched the ball. It had begun to swing out from its first position, circling above the tabletop. Where it passed, the balls beneath began to nudge at one another, caught in the same aggressive force. Little shadows fluttered on the baize, the way that helicopter rotors make ripples on a lake.

“I can’t abide betrayal, Copeland. I won’t stand for it.”

With a sudden, rapid movement, he snatched the ball out of the air. He held it in his hand as if he could have ground it into dust between his fingers.

Immediately, the room was still. The energy was still there—I could feel it, tingling—but for a moment, it was silent, and disarmed.

Eddie, stepping in, said, “It’s just a little localized power surge, that’s all. We get a lot of it here on the lower floors.” He smiled nervously. “Don’t worry, it’s harmless.”

“I wouldn’t bank on that,” I said.

Edward put the ball back on the tabletop. I glanced at him, then went across and picked it up. It was hot—friction heat—but quite inert. I turned it over in my hand, resisting the urge to try spinning it myself; I’d already guessed that wouldn’t work.

“We are looking for the same man, Copeland. A traitor, a betrayer. I was let down. I was betrayed. The question that I have for you is this: how do you intend to put it right?”

“Me?”

“We’re talking about a criminal and a liar. A man who walked into my home, who used the name of your organization,” he jabbed a finger at me, “made me promises, then failed to fulfill them, and who—”

“Hang on, hang on. You’re saying he had Registry credentials?”

“Of course he didn’t. If he’d done that I’d have his real name, not this stupid pseudonym.”

I felt the tension in the room shoot up a notch.

“I want him found, Copeland. I want him found, and brought to me. You understand?”

I stepped away. I was tired of this. I told him, “Mr. Ballington, you need to go to the police. Or whoever usually finds people for you. We want this guy because we think he’s got some property that belongs to us. Though if he’s sold it on to you, well . . . I’d say you probably owe us, rather than the other way around. You want to think on that a while.”

I’d half expected anger. Even wanted it, perhaps, just as a way to judge the power levels, and how closely they were tied in with his moods, his feelings. Yet now, he smiled, folded his arms, and looked at me as if he’d just noticed a cockroach on his shoe.

I said, “I’d like to help here. In both our interests. But it may not go the way you want it to.”

He snorted.

I said, “If you can tell me how you came by it, for instance? How he got in touch with you? Can you . . . ?”

“You know precisely how I came by it.”

He was no longer looking at me.

I said, “If you can give me details of the transaction. And the man himself. A description, or a photograph—”

I thought I’d spoken mildly. But he snapped round, yelling now.

“You know the fucking details! You fucking know!”

He was six feet from me, yet I felt myself flinch back as from a blow.

“Sir—”

Dropping his voice, and speaking with a fierce precision, he said, “I want that man. I want to know his whereabouts. He will learn that no one breaks a promise to me. Not him, and not you, either.”

The air was buzzing, a high, insect hum, a shivering that set my teeth on edge.

I had made no promises, but I thought it best to nod.

His face was dark. In the low light, it almost matched his hair.

I said, “Your god isn’t contained.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“I’d say, whoever this guy is, he hasn’t got the know-how, or the gear. Either way, he’s dropped you in the shit.”

“That,” he said again, “is not the problem.”