Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(76)

The god was on the thirteenth floor. Hence the lack of floor number.

Angel said, “I guess that’s meant to be significant.”

“Hot-shit voodoo.”

The humor wasn’t much, but at least it took the pressure off. Just for a moment.

So we checked over the plans, remembering what we’d seen. There was the big room where the god was housed. A bunch of smaller rooms were designated “storage” which probably meant, “Everyone’s too scared to go there.” A stairwell ran beside the elevator shaft. That was good. An angry god invokes the same rules as a fire: don’t use the elevators.

I’d had some vague hope that, once I got the plans, there’d be a chance of running a perimeter outside the god room, and not going in at all. But that wasn’t going to work, unless I fancied crawling round the window ledges.

Silverman was filming all this time.

“Great shots?” I said. “Great cinema?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “It isn’t like you think, you know.”

“Yeah. We both heard. Ghirelli put a bug in my phone. What you know, we know. And here we are, eh?”

Angel cautioned, “Chris . . .”

“You’re still, um,” said Silverman. “Still mad at me, I think.”

“You’re near at hand.” But then I let myself relax; the anger just fell out of me. “Sorry. You want the truth, I’m angry at myself. And Edward bloody Ballington, as well.”

“He’s something else.”

“Oh, he’s that, all right.” I rolled up the thirteenth floor, put it on one side. “I’ll say this. He played me. I might as well have volunteered, the moment I set eyes on him. Both of us looking for this bloody Johnny Appleseed, and neither of us had his real name. But he’d got to be Registry. He even said he was, to Ballington. But Ballington’s not got the contacts in the Registry, or not like he wants. Then I come knocking. And what does he do? Hands me his biggest clue, the CCTV, and lets me do the work for him. Assumes I won’t cooperate, so he takes out some insurance, courtesy of his security guy. And just like that, I do exactly what he wants. For free, what’s more.”

“Sucks.”

“I’ll tell you the worst thing. He told me. Spelled it out. Everybody works for me, whether they know it or they don’t. And here I am—still bloody working for him.” I ran my eyes over the twelfth floor plans. Hotel rooms. Lots of them. “So how’d he drag you into it?”

“Usual. Trying to raise the money. Wasn’t looking good. And suddenly, out of the blue, I get a call. Plane ticket, hotel room. Be there.”

“Royal command.”

“That’s it. I’ll be honest, I’m still trying to work out what I walked into. I got here last night. This morning, it’s, come on down, see my hotel. And I walk into a war zone. Professionally speaking, it was . . . kind of a challenge.”

“I bet.”

“It never stops.” Silverman glanced back at the door, as if expecting to be called away at any moment. “He wants everything on camera. Not like Eddie-boy—he just didn’t care. The old man’s into it. I swear, he’s walking through his own fucking epic. In his mind, this is How I Saved America. He makes speeches to the camera, and—Jesus. The things he says. ‘We are winning back the nation. This is the Second American Revolution.’ He’s serious. He believes this stuff.”

“Tell him to tip my tea into the harbor and I’ll go home.”

“I’m starting to think this whole thing is actually, um, pretty scary.”

“You weren’t worried by a bunch of guys dressed up as soldier-boys?”

“I thought it was a stunt at first. And then, you know, I just did my job, and . . .”

“‘Dad-o gets impatient, these days.’”

I put the twelfth floor aside. I’d hoped for better options there, but we’d just have to make do.

“And the makeup!” Silverman said. “Every five minutes, it’s More makeup, more makeup! What’s with that?”

“I’ve got theories.” I looked at the schematics for the fourteenth floor. Some big suites. Easier to handle. Could I take the thing without even wiring the thirteenth? Squeeze it between twelve and fourteen? Was that even possible? I talked it over with Angel for a moment. Then, to Silverman, I said, “You want to help out? Like before?”

“Big Hollow . . . ?”

“Yeah. Good fun, eh? Enjoyed yourself?”

“Chris,” he said, “I think it was the single most completely terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my whole life.”

“Till now,” I said.





Chapter 61

Holes in Reality




I went up alone to fourteen. I had to think, to get the feel of it—something that’s hard to rationalize in a report, but can make all the difference between a smooth ride and a total balls-up.

Inspiration, empathy.

Gut-instinct.

I set the control box in the elevator lobby, then spooled the cable out along the corridor. There were guest rooms either side, some recently vacated—I found suitcases under the beds, clothes in the wardrobes, toothbrushes in holders on the sinks. It baffled me how anybody could have slept there, stayed there. How or why. The place was jumping. I could feel it, like someone scraping fingernails around the inside of my skull. I was conscious of the god on the floor below—not just a shiver in the air here, but a potent, willful presence, and if I let it, it would twist my thoughts till I lost track of where I was, what I was trying to do, all sense of purpose and identity.