Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [202]
Then one of the kitchen girls called out to the shed from the house door: phone call. He went inside, picked up the house’s phone apprehensively. “Hello?”
“Frank is that you?”
“Yes. Caroline?”
“Yes.”
“Is everything okay?”
“No, everything is not okay. I need to see you, now.”
“Well, but I’ve got something, I’m really sorry—”
“Frank, please! I think he found out about me taking that disk. So I’ve only got a little time. I’ve got to initiate Plan B or else. I need your help.”
“You’re leaving him?”
“Yes! That’s what I’m telling you. I’ve left already. That’s done. But I need help getting away and—you’re the only one I trust.” Her voice twisted at the end, and suddenly Frank understood that she was afraid. He had never heard it like that in her before, and had not recognized it.
Frank clutched the phone hard. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Chevy Chase. I’ll meet you at your tree.”
“Okay. It’ll take me half an hour or so. Maybe longer with the ice on the roads.”
“Okay good. Good. Thanks. I love you Frank.” She hung up.
Frank groaned. He stared at the embassy’s phone in his hand. “Shit,” he said. That someone as bold and competent as her should be afraid. . . . “I love you too,” he whispered.
His stomach had shrunk to the size of a baseball. What would this husband of hers do? He picked up the house phone and called Diane’s cell phone number.
Maybe she was bugged too. She was doing the same kind of thing Frank was, wasn’t she?
“Hello, Diane? It’s Frank. Listen I’m really sorry about this, but something has come up here and I just have to help out, it’s a kind of emergency. So I need to, I mean can we take a rain check, and do our dinner tomorrow or whenever you can?”
Very short pause. “Sure, of course. No problem.”
“Thanks, I’m really sorry about this. See there’s this,” but he hadn’t thought anything up, a stupid mistake, and he was going to say “something at the embassy” when she heard the pause and cut him off:
“No it’s fine, don’t worry. We’ll do it another time.”
“Thanks Diane. I appreciate it. How about tomorrow then?”
“Um, no—tomorrow won’t work, my daughter is coming in. Here—oh, wait. I don’t see my calendar. Tell you what, let’s just say soon.”
“Okay, soon. Thanks. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
End of call. He put the receiver down, stood there.
“Ah fuck.”
He drove over to Van Ness, parked in one of his old spots on Brandywine, walked east into the forest. Slowly he approached his tree, coming to it on the remains of Ross Drive. He saw no one. But then there she was, stepping out from behind a thick oak between site 22 and his tree. He went to her and they hugged hard, clinging tightly to each other.
She pulled back and looked at him. Even in the dark he could see that her nose was red, her eyes red-rimmed.
She sniffed, shook her head. “Sorry. It’s been a very bad day.” She handed him another paper sleeve of CDs. “Here. This is more of their shit. It’s a new superblack, working between Homeland Security and DOD. Another strategic support branch.”
Frank took the disks, put them in his jacket pocket. “What happened?”
“We had a fight. I mean that used to happen a lot, but this time it was—I don’t know. Bad. Scary. I’m sick of feeling this way. Really, being around him—it’s bad for me. I know better. I can’t stand it anymore.”
“He didn’t find something out?”
“He didn’t say anything directly, but I think he did, yes. I don’t know. If he found out about me taking the election program . . .” She shuddered, thinking about it. Then: “It might explain some things. I mean he chipped me again, since I last saw you. New kinds that he thought I didn’t know about. They hop on you. When I found them I left them in until today, but I took them out, and then I used his code to get what I could about this superblack onto disk. I don’t know how much it’ll tell anyone. Then I left.”
“Are you sure you found all the chips?”
“Yes. The bastard. He is so . . . He spies and spies and spies.”
“So, I mean, can you be sure you found everything