The Puppet Master by John Dalmas

Author:John Dalmas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 067131842X
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2001-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

18 — COMMAND PERFORMANCE

The driver was Carlos. He asked if I was all right, and I told him I was. He didn't ask any more questions. Instead he phoned our security division headquarters, in north Burbank. Told them to send an extra crew to corporate headquarters in West Hollywood. The Gnosties were unlikely to try anything further tonight, but if they did, that's where they'd hit.

As he drove, I sat by Tuuli in the backseat, turning the interrogation over in my mind. I didn't even ask how they'd known where I was. Carlos stopped at a Denny's on Sunset, where we took a booth and ordered coffee and pie. At that hour, it was a good place to wait while the added security had time to reach headquarters.

We were almost the only customers there. It was a good place to talk, if we kept it quiet.

"So," Carlos said, "I suppose you've got questions."

"Yeah. How did you guys come to be there?" I looked at Tuuli. "You especially."

It turned out she actually had gone to Arizona. About the time the flight left Williams though, she'd had a premonition that I'd need her, that I'd be in extreme danger. Frank Diacono was waiting for her at Flagstaff. She told him her premonition, then tried to phone me. I'd already left my room, and left my beeper there. I don't usually carry it off duty. So she called the office, and the night watch forwarded her call to Carlos. They'd agreed to meet at building reception.

When she'd finished her call, Frank had flown her to Barstow himself, where she could catch a Vegas-L.A. local with almost no wait. Frank, of course, didn't have a permit to fly in L.A. airspace—those are really hard to get, for obvious reasons—or he'd have flown her the rest of the way. All the way back she'd worried about what she could possibly do when she got here. The premonition was vague. I was in danger; that's all there was of it.

When she got with Carlos though, it seemed to her that the danger was or would be at the Campus. So they'd driven there, and she'd told Carlos, "Park here." "Here" being at the curb about forty or fifty meters from where I eventually came over the fence. That had been about midnight; they'd had more than a two-hour wait. She smiled at me, then reached and patted Carlos' cheek. "And you never complained a bit," she said to him. "I'm not sure you even doubted."

He laughed. "No comment," he said. Carlos Katagawa was seldom the inscrutable Oriental, regardless of his Japanese ancestry. "Actually I assumed it was genuine when you first talked to me on the phone. I've seen you operate before, remember. But I admit feeling spooky about sitting there at the curb with nothing happening. What good could it possibly do to wait there? Next to a nearly empty parking lot!" He sipped coffee and looked at me. "That's quite a lady you married. So.

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