Underground Airlines(59)

Kevin of the Brightmoor section of Detroit, Michigan.

I held my hands and felt the blood creep out of my shoulder.

It was nearly nightfall before the door of that old abandoned community center creaked open and Barton came in, with Cook behind him.

Barton, out of clerical costume and in jeans and a shirt, carried a laptop under one arm. Cook leaned against the wall and chewed his gum while Barton pulled a chair out of the circle and dragged it by the back until he was sitting across from me.

He opened the laptop and turned it so I could see the screen. Maris stayed where he was, the shotgun balanced across his knees.

Barton clicked on a familiar icon, and a map opened up on his screen. The map showed the world, then it zoomed in, a sickening, rapid descent, until it showed the United States, then Indiana, then the city. There was a red dot, midcity, and it flashed on and off, on and off.

“Do you know what that is?” said the priest.

“I do.”

“Tell me what it is.”

I stared at the dot. I was transfixed. “It’s me.”

“Correct.” He shut the computer and stood up. “It’s you.”

“How is this possible?” I said, as if that mattered. As if that were the important thing. I was trying to figure out what was happening here—what was next.

“As you know, this man is a law enforcement officer. There are certain channels to which he has access.”

Cook waved his hand. “A man owed me a favor.”

I took a new look at Officer Cook, and he returned my gaze steadily, slight smile, eyebrows raised. No big deal, his face was saying, but we both knew—if perhaps Barton did not—that this was a very big deal indeed. I imagined Mr. Bridge’s reaction if he were to discover this pinhole leak in the steel sides of the US Marshals Service Information Technology Division.

Barton kept his eyes on me.

“You are a tracker, and you are an investigator. What you are going to do now is track and investigate. The package Kevin was supposed to bring us, containing items of crucial importance, is still within the Four.”

“How do you know that?”

Barton grimaced, and Cook answered for him. “Well, it ain’t here, is it?”

“The point is”—Barton again—“you are going to find what Kevin left behind and bring it to us.” He pointed to the laptop. “We will be watching where you go. We will watch you go south, watch you come north again. When you do, you will come here directly and hand over what you have found. If you do not do this, we will find you.” Again, he gestured to the computer. “And we will kill you.”

There was no use pretending I didn’t understand. No use asking why. Barton understood exactly what I was, exactly how this worked. I had no fingerprints. I had no permanent identity. I had the training and the resources of the United States government behind me. And of course if I was caught, if I was tortured or beaten, if I were to be murdered or sold south, then no one would miss me. No one would care. An invisible man is an expendable man.

I let my eyes rest a moment more on the blinking dot on the screen.

I turned back to Cook. “I don’t understand something here. You’re tracking me, but my handler—my boss—he’s tracking me, too. So—”

Cook started to answer, but Barton raised one hand, palm out, gesturing him to silence, as he had done to me at the Fountain Diner. Then he lowered his voice, cocked his head, and dropped into an impression of me, of someone like me, the cool, tough undercover agent calling in: “Hell of a thing,” he said, “but what I’m hearing is, this runner never made it past the Fence. He’s still down there, it looks like. If I’m gonna find him for you, that’s where I gotta go.”

I closed my eyes and nodded. This was my life; this was my destiny—to be someone’s tool, someone or other.

“When you have found what we are looking for,” added Cook, “you call and tell boss man no luck. You couldn’t find the boy.”

“Hell of a thing,” I murmured.

“Then you bring us our package,” said Barton. “And that’s it. We’re done.”

“Done?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Cook. “Done.”

This was too much for Maris. “No,” he said. “No—” but now it was his turn to be hushed by Barton’s imperious hand. “Yes,” said the priest. “Succeed in this. Make this right. And we will arrange a connecting flight to Canada for you.”

Maris stood and laid his shotgun on the ground and stomped out of the circle of chairs, took a sullen distance on the far side of the room, leaning in the doorjamb with arms crossed. Barton did not move. Kept his glowing eyes on me.

“All right,” I said. “So what am I looking for?”

“It’s a package. Small. An envelope, padded and sealed. Kevin’s instructions when he had it were to mark it on the back with his initials, so we would know it for sure. We do not know if he did that or not. But on the front it will bear the insignia of Garments of the Greater South. Do you know that insignia?”

I nodded. I knew it. I knew it from where it had been emblazoned on the collarbone of Jackdaw the slave, Kevin the sophomore. I knew it from the full file.

“So it’s a sealed envelope from GGSI. Thick envelope. Marked on the back.” Barton nodded. “But what’s inside?”