“I see. Well, twenty-five million would do that—and quite nicely!”
“See, here’s the thing, Nueve. There’s no other way out of this mess. It’s me they want. Take me out of the equation and everything’s equal again.”
“Equal?”
“Back to normal. Back the way it was. So the first thing to take care of is Samuel. He left the Company for me and I don’t think you’d consider hiring him back, so I want to make sure he’s taken care of, plus a little extra for his trouble.”
“It’s a generous severance, Alfred. But I cannot see how that balances this particular scale.”
“That’s the second part,” I said.
“I thought there might be one.”
“I want you to extract somebody from the civilian interface.”
“And that somebody would be ...?”
“Me.”
05:06:01:41
After breakfast, two doctors came in, escorted by the policeman Detective Black had stationed outside my door. At least, the cop thought they were doctors. One carried a stainless-steel valise. The other walked with a cane.
“More tests, huh?” I asked.
“More tests,” the one with the cane said.
The cop left. Nueve leaned his cane against the bed rail and sat in the chair while his buddy got to work. He gently peeled off the bandage over my nose and leaned over me, examining the damage. His breath smelled like cinnamon.
“How bad is it?”
He sniffed. “Seen worse. We’ll make it work.”
He dug into the valise. I glanced at Nueve, who was smiling without showing his teeth.
“We’re stopping by Samuel’s room before we leave,” I told him.
“Unnecessary. It increases the risk.”
“I don’t care. I want to say goodbye. I owe him that.”
He shrugged. Cinnamon-Breath was leaning over me again, applying latex prosthetics piece by piece, using a small brush and a foul-smelling adhesive.
“What did you find out about Jourdain Garmot?” I asked Nueve.
“Age: twenty-two. Citizenry: French. Marital status: single. Occupation: president and chief executive officer of Tintagel International, a consulting firm based in England that specializes in the research and development of security-related systems and software.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means its business is war.”
“War?”
“Fighting them, winning them.”
“And it’s big.”
“There is no bigger business than war, Alfred.”