3rd World Products, Book 16 (6 page)

With a shrug, I said, “We can drink our beers and chat a bit, then go our respective ways. Or not, if we can find some mutual interests. By the way, be careful tossing phrases like ‘
hooking up
‘ around. Some people use it as a euphemism for sex these days.”
 

Our beers arrived. Once the waitress had poured Tanya’s and left, Tanya asked, “Are you one of those people who use it as a euphemism?”
 

Taking a sip, I said, “Nah. I’m old fashioned. It still means ‘
getting together
‘ to me. Besides, time with a woman like you is never wasted. Maybe I can soak up enough of your presence to dream about you later.”
 

She didn’t seem to have a response for that, so I sipped again and asked, “Have you given any more thought to going freelance? Are there any good reasons you shouldn’t? Legal reasons, I mean?”
 

The change of topic seemed to catch her off balance. Tanya canted her head slightly as she regarded me and said, “No, I don’t think there’d be any legal reasons, but I signed a contract that I wouldn’t engage in local real estate sales for thirty days after leaving my company.”
 

“Couldn’t get the job without it?”
 

She shook her head. “No, and all the better companies have the same post-employment stipulations.”
 

“Guess that depends on how you define ‘better’.”
 

She shrugged. “How many millions in sales.”
 

“Hm. I was about to ask whether you could survive a month of not working, but it doesn’t really matter. Whether you’re in somebody’s harness or not, they’d all figure out what you’re doing the first time you put a deal through. To really make this work well, you’d have to get a lock on one end or the other, and preferably both.”
 

Sipping her beer, she asked, “Any ideas about how to do something like that?”
 

“I’ll give it some thought. Companies have moved before, so cornering an immediate market this way probably isn’t a completely new idea.”
 

Tanya chuckled, “No, probably not.”
 

I tried to look thoughtful as I ticked ice off my mug and took a sip, then said, “But if you’re in
a company harness when you sell, you’d have to share commissions. Got any family who could help you through a month of unemployment? Parents? Brothers? Sisters?”
 

“A brother, but he wouldn’t be much help. My mom is… well, she couldn’t help, either.”
 

Trying to look thoughtful again, I had my core try to find Marie Conner using Tanya’s records for reference. It didn’t take long at all; she was in a nursing home in Ocala due to brain injuries from a car accident just over a year ago.
 

I suddenly wanted very much to help Tanya become as successful as possible. That she’d been stalking me for a day or so seemed almost altogether irrelevant, but only almost.
 

Tanya must have seen something in my expression. Her own expression was one of mild concern as she asked, “What’s wrong, Ed?”
 

“Just thinking about taking some shortcuts.”
 

Somewhat warily, she asked, “What kind of shortcuts?”
 

“Not sure yet.”
 

I remembered the address she’d shown on her laptop in Inverness. ‘
42796 Carmichael Ave
‘. My core found a listing that showed me a quarter-million dollar house in Ocala, not Inverness. Sales records said it had been sold twice in the last two years, once by Tanya Connor. The guy who’d bought it had flipped it quickly. The next buyer had apparently run into a few problems; he was asking slightly less than he’d paid for it.
 

Sipping my beer, I looked at the lake and said, “Let’s take a walk. Maybe go out on the dock.”
 

“I don’t know if we can take our drinks outside.”
 

Standing up, I held a hand out to her and said, “They’ll be here when we get back.”
 

Waving the waitress to the table, I said, “We’re going outside for a few. Don’t lose our drinks, okay?”
 

She nodded and returned to the bar. Tanya patted her laptop and asked, “What about this?”
 

“Who’s gonna steal it in this place?”
 

“I’d rather not leave it.”
 

Grabbing the case’s straps, I slung it on a shoulder and said, “No problem. We can put it in your car on the way.”
 

Now on her feet, Tanya said, “But I was going to…”
 

I cut in, “Then you can take it out of your car later. I don’t want to carry it over the water.”
 

Her gaze narrow, Tanya said, “Ed, tell me what the hell’s going on.”
 

“We’re just going to talk about some things where nobody can hear us, ma’am.”
 

“
What
things?”
 

Striding for the porch door, I said, “Come find out.”
 

She caught up with me as I crossed the parking lot and had to hurry a little to keep up. I stopped at her car and indicated the trunk. “Open it.” She did so. I put the case in and closed the trunk, then said, “Now we can go to the dock.”
 

Tanya sounded rather irritated as she snapped, “Maybe I’d rather just leave.”
 

With a glance at her, I shrugged. “Your choice.”
 

I headed for the dock at an ambling pace. After a few moments, I heard her footsteps behind me. This time she didn’t hurry to catch up, so I stopped and waited, then continued on as she walked on my left.
 

She asked, “Why are we going out on the dock?”
 

“Because it’s time to level with me, Tanya.”
 

Panfish and minnows scattered to either side of the dock at our first footsteps and shadows on the wood planks.
 

As we reached the end of the dock, she asked, “Level with you about what, exactly?”
 

Studying the fish below, I said, “You stayed at a motel a mile from my house last night, which means you followed me to Inverness and engineered our lunch encounter.”
 

Looking up and meeting her gaze, I said, “Your mother is Marie Connor and you look and sound very much like she did back when I knew her. That’s a compliment, by the way.”
 

I stopped there to see if she’d open up. Tanya had stopped by the dock’s table. Now she stared
at me with a level of shock and kept a hand on that table as she rather shakily lowered herself into a chair.
 

“Ed, I… How the
hell
did you know?!”
 

“That’s my business, ma’am. Why didn’t you just call me or come to the house? Why pretend to meet me over fast food and a sick computer forty miles from home?”
 

Glancing back at the faux-boat house that was the restaurant’s back porch, Tanya sighed, “We should have brought those beers. I could sure use one right now.”
 

“Suffer gracefully, ma’am. Answers, please.”
 

She fidgeted for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “I didn’t call because I was trying to be careful. Very careful. And I wanted to see what I could find out about you on my own, quietly. One of Mom’s old friends told me some of the things you used to do.”
 

“Who?”
 

With obvious reluctance in her hesitation, she replied, “Connie Turner. She showed up with a man named Will — her husband — soon after Mom’s accident. They asked a lot of questions, made copies of all the paperwork, and even talked to the other people involved in the accident.”
 

Damn. I hadn’t thought of Will or Connie since… well, since they’d gone Stateside in 1973 for new jobs in a brand new outfit called the Drug Enforcement Agency. Out of sight really can be out of mind. And they got married? Who’da thunk it? They used to fight like cats and dogs sometimes.
 

I said, “Depending on what your mother was doing at the time, Connie and Will might have showed up to make sure your Mom’s accident was really an accident, Tanya. But if what she told you made us seem like monsters, why did you look for me at all?”
 

Still fidgety, Tanya took a breath and said, “No, not monsters, but…” She shook her head slightly and said, “During one of our talks, Connie said their old boss, a woman named Linda, went to work for 3rd World Products and pulled you out of retirement to help with something. After what she’d told me about things your teams did in Germany, I couldn’t figure out how a company like 3rd World could use people like you.”
 

She stopped for a moment, then continued, “I also wondered why my mother would even have any old friends like them and you. Connie seemed pretty startled by the question, then she seemed to get offended and left.”
 

I chuckled, “If you put it like that, she might really have been offended, but she probably also didn’t want to be the one to tell you what your mom used to do.”
 

Tanya nodded. “I figured that out somewhere along the line, but before I did, I tried to find out by contacting the company Mom worked for back then. Just to try to figure out how she’d been involved with things like that, you know? All I got was an official denial that the company had ever employed anyone by that name.”
 

“No surprise there. Government contracting agencies were often used as covers and names changed with the missions. The people you talked to probably had nothing on file and no idea who or what you were talking about.”
 

Tanya paused again, then said, “Okay. Maybe so, but I think that call was what made the FBI visit me. They wouldn’t tell me anything, either, of course. It was all very frustrating. The next time Connie visited, I told her I thought they ought to stop coming to see Mom because nothing they told me added up. Will got real mad and Connie said they’d be back later, then they left. When they came back, Connie showed me some old pictures of them and Mom and Dad on vacation at a beach. I found out Mom wasn’t just one of their old friends. She was running some of the extraction teams.”
 

She stopped talking and sat scuffing a fingernail on the table for several moments. Just as I was about to prompt her to continue, she said in a flat tone, “Connie told me what happened in Leipzig. I couldn’t believe it.”
 

“Go ahead and believe it. Your Mom and Will saved everybody’s asses that night, Tanya. And the two families they were extracting. Nine civilians. Four adults and five kids.”
 

Looking up, Tanya snapped, “But she killed a
truck load
of guards to do it.”
 

I shrugged. “Maybe not. Nobody stuck around to count bodies. More Stasi in another truck were shooting at them. The car Will tied to their back bumper was shredded.”
 

“Wait. He did what with the car?”
 

“They ran ropes through a stack of old tires. Six, as I recall. Tied them together like a tube. They tied the tube to the middle of their back bumper, then they stacked tires on the front seats of another car and tied it to the other end of the bumper tire stack. Two cars with the families went ahead with Connie and Mike. Will and Marie brought up the rear, dragging the other car behind them. The Stasi saw two cars running real close together without lights and chased them. Shot at them, too, of course, but the tires and metal acted like armor. Will figured the ropes would only hold for a few miles in those tight little streets, so they decided to block the street with one of the Stasi trucks. Marie bailed out in a slow turn. She tossed grenades into the lead truck as it passed her and hopped over a low stone wall. When the grenades blew, she cut through an empty building, then ran like hell to get back to Will. They said the rear car looked pretty bad by then. It was full of holes and the trunk lid and back tires were gone. They cut it loose in the middle of a bridge and flattened its front tires, then took off again. Everybody got away clean.”
 

Tanya just sat there staring for a moment, then she muttered, “Jesus!”
 

“Yup. Takes a helluva lot of bullets to tear a trunk lid off.”
 

“That’s not what I meant! I mean… well…”
 

I sighed, “Never mind. You can’t really wrap your mind around it, ma’am. Not the number of bullets it takes to rip off a trunk lid or the truck grenades or… well, any of it, really. That’s why whatever opinions you may have had or thought you had really don’t mean shit. And those Stasi would have gotten bonuses and weekend passes for killing escapees, so fuck them, too.”
 

Her gaze narrowed, possibly at my rough language as well as my attitude. I said, “But none of that covers why you’d want to contact me. Still waiting to hear that.”
 

After a moment, Tanya tapped a fingernail on the table and sighed, “Ed, I didn’t have any intention of contacting you, at first, but I have a friend who collects meteorites. My friend has a friend who’s an astronomer in Arizona and now that astronomer friend has new legs.”
 

She looked up to me as if expecting a response. I just looked back at her and waited for more.
 

After a moment, Tanya said, “She went to the Arctic on a flitter to collect meteorites and now she has new legs. I called her, Ed. She said she couldn’t talk about any of it and hung up. She wouldn’t answer the phone again, so I guess she knew who was calling. I looked everywhere I could think of to find out all I could, but all I found were blank walls.”
 

She paused and allowed me a small grin as she said, “Then I noticed something. Your name, the name of the guy Linda had pulled out of retirement for 3rd World Products. It came up three times about Arctic meteorites. The ones you gave schools had to be certified for display.”