Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(51)

I heard a clicking sound. It started slowly, then grew faster, like a hundred castanets all rattling away. The snooker balls were edging in a slow dance, shuddering across the tabletop, trembling together. Edward told me, “This is what I want from you. Listen now. I know you’re looking for him. All I ask is this: that when you find him, you call me. One phone call. Then you do whatever you want. Whatever. Have him shot, arrested, put in prison, I don’t care. But you call me first. You understand?”

I said nothing.

“Can you do that for me, Copeland?”

“I . . . might. If I know enough to trace him.”

He opened his mouth, raised his finger to me.

There were three whiskey glasses. Two were on the tall table; the third, Eddie’s, balanced on a chair arm on the far side of the room.

They broke. Simultaneously.

Cracked, shattered, tumbled into pieces, ice and liquid spilling round them, dripping on the carpet.

The bottle took a moment longer: broke with the slightest click, and dropped apart.

“Fuck.”

Edward swung about, looking this way and that, his fists clenched, his eyes blazing.

Without a word, he flung open the door and stormed off.

The buzzing died. The air grew quieter.

Eddie issued orders into his phone, summoning a cleanup. To me, he said, “Give him a minute. Then we’ll find out where he’s gone.”

I said, “It’s riding him.”

“Oh, something’s riding him, all right. Come on. Let’s go get another drink.”





Chapter 44

A Bright, Bright Light Upon Our Future




There was a power here, sharpening the air, putting a taste of metal in my mouth.

It felt like a retrieval site. Like an active god.

Yet just an hour before, and there’d been nothing.

A reader might have picked it up. But no human senses. If I’d had to guess, then I’d have sworn the place was clean.

It had escalated quickly.

That was worrying.

Now Eddie strolled around with all the ease of a protected child. He fetched another bottle from the cabinet. He chattered happily. He called out, “Dad-o! Dad-o!” and he grinned at me, beckoning me on. But for me, the place had changed. Even the fabric of it seemed in doubt. I didn’t trust the walls, I didn’t trust the furniture. Everything that once seemed solid, comfortable, now felt treacherous, uncertain. I wanted to test every floorboard, every stair, before I stepped on it. As if the house might all at once dissolve around me, one more fiction in a litany of madness.

“Dad-o! Where ya hiding, man?”

Temperatures were way too high. I heard the AC creaking, roaring, trying to keep up.

“These surges,” I said. “Are they regular? How often? More frequent now, or not?”

Eddie just spread his hands. “Relax,” he said. “It’s no big deal. Guy gets steamed up, twenty minutes later, and he’s calm again. Happens all the time.”

“And let me guess. Each time’s a wee bit worse, right?”

“Hey, I don’t keep score—”

“But it was different, say, a month back?”

“A month, yeah, sure. A month’s a long time.”

“And a week ago. I bet it’s worse than a week ago, too. Yeah?”

He didn’t answer that.

We finally found Dad-o on an upper floor, slumped down in an armchair, staring out across the grounds. A bottle and a glass stood on the table next to him. His carrot-colored hair was disarrayed, his belly sagged over his pants. He watched me sideways out of one eye, like a toad examining a fly.

“You know this country’s sin?” he said.

I took a breath.

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“No. No, you don’t.” He spoke slowly, with the measured rhythms of a drunk struggling to sound sober. “Our sin is wiped out of the history books. Turned upside down. Good is bad and bad is good. But deep inside—deep, deep, in here—” he pressed a fist against his chest, “I tell you: there is not one man, woman or child who doesn’t know the truth.”

He paused a moment, his gaze seeming to waver, and he lost himself for maybe ten, twelve seconds. Then the fire rose in him again. His fist clenched. It came up like a gavel.

“This is my country, Copeland. I know this country. I know how it works, and how it thinks. I own this country. I own transport, media, construction. I own hospitals, I own insurance. I own manufacturing. And here’s a thing I know—I know that there is no more loyalty left here. I know that.” There was anger in him now—anger, and, it seemed to me, a trace of something else—regret. “Fellow works for you. Works for you for years, maybe. Then one day, someone comes along and whispers in his ear—oh, he sees it on TV, or in some stupid lifestyle magazine, something like that—and suddenly, it’s—” he did a mocking sing-song “—I should get more money for this job. Or, I need more vacation time. Or—oh, it just goes on. It’s hardly credible, a lot of it. There is a wonderful thing I’ve been hearing lately. Wonderful. You called me a name. Yeah. You called me a bad word, Mr. Ballington. Oh, I love that! Love it. I’m leaving ’cause you said—ha. You bet I called you a bad word. You fucking bet I did! I got a word for you, the word is traitor. That’s my bad word. Traitor to me, and traitor to the USA.” He glared at me, his eyes alight. “You know what wrecked this country? You know why US jobs are going to Mexico, and China, and Brazil? Because, because—” He swung his head from side to side. “I should get more money for this job. I should get more vacation time.” He wrinkled up his nose. “You called me a bad word. That’s it, through and through.” He slapped his fist against the chair arm. “This used to be a great country. A man could make something of himself here, like my daddy did, and his daddy before him. Make himself a giant, a colossus, towering, high over his fellows. Oh yes. Not these days, though. Not now. Oh, Mr. Ballington, I want more money. Well—you know what? You know what?”