Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [192]
Once out on the sidewalk he put the earbuds of his iPod lookalike in his ears. “Did he do it?”
“Yes,” he heard in his right ear.
He walked west on G Street to the Watergate, then across the Rock Creek Parkway, through the Thompson boat club parking lot, where his VW van was parked; then past the van, over the little bridge crossing the creek, and onto the Georgetown waterfront. It was about eight-thirty.
Then the city lost power. “Shit,” Frank said. The waterfront was now dark, and people were calling out and wandering in the sudden gloom.
“This is bad,” he said.
The voice in his right ear said, “—proceed for now. She says she can make it over no problem.”
Frank went down to the water’s edge and watched the cars’ headlights make an uneven line on the Virginia side. George Washington Parkway, Arlington streets above. Generators were bringing light back here and there across the city, on both sides of the river.
In this partial light Caroline appeared, looking flushed and intent. They met and hugged, then spoke like amateur actors, their voices extra-expressive—at times almost cutting each other off in their eagerness to say their lines. They rolled their eyes at each other, tried to pace themselves better. Two bad actors in the dark. He could see she was wearing the vest under her blouse, and thought her ex might be able to too. He handed her a little key-chain zip drive.
Awkwardly he put his arm around her shoulder, and they rested at the river rail for a moment, itching at the unfelt transference of the new type of surveillance tick that had been lofted onto him by the security guard—a thing of plastic and quartz, pinging at a frequency the wands didn’t cover. A programmable mobile chip, programmed to jump on first contact and then stay put: a nano-event neither of them could feel except in the set of their muscles, a kind of itch on the inside of the skull.
Together they hiked back over the little bridge, and stopped by Frank’s van. They embraced and drew apart, looking helplessly at each other, just barely visible to each other, and that only by the light of the passing cars on the parkway. This was a dark part of town even when the power was turned on. Frank let go of her hand and watched her walk away.
Now she was walking in a crowd of Umberto and Wallace’s people, disguised as ordinary citizens and as tourists, which explained their daypacks and camera gear, their iPod earbuds, their aimless gawking and walking. It was a very professional team, far more expert than an ordinary SWAT team. Special ops—
And yet.
Frank hopped up in his van’s driver’s seat, prepared to be carjacked or shot; the presence of Umberto’s guys quietly sitting in the back of the van was little comfort. The blackout was a factor they had not planned on, it was dark out there and blackouts always induced a little chaos. Caroline was headed for the Watergate and then to the Kennedy Center. The special ops teams were going to follow her for as long as it took. They knew Cooper’s group had overheard the call from Frank, they knew Frank had been followed. Because they numbered almost everyone in the area, they were confident they would spot anyone approaching her with intent long before they neared her. At that point they would close in, and act in the same moment as any approach.
Frank’s part in the cover story had had him passing along vital information, indeed proof of a crime, so he sat there uncomforted by his guards in back, expecting to be shot or blown up, but of course the van and the area were fully secured, and now one of the guards was wanding him with a bigger device than any he had seen before. Still a nanochip there on the back of his jacket.