SIMS 09

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

DECEMBER 16

"Duke Jackson is dead," said Lister's voice through the receiver.

Luca Portero tightened his grip on the encrypted phone and kept kicking at the leaves. He'd been out in the woods surrounding his cabin, taking some fresh morning air, taking precautions...the way things were going, precautions might come in handy. The news didn't surprise him.

"How?"

"Broken neck. His body was found around 5:00A .M. A red flag went up at our end when NYPD tried to run his prints this morning. They've got him listed as a John Doe and he'll remain that way."

"What about Palmer?"

"Not a peep. And that worries me more. I'd almost prefer to have his corpse surface."

Luca knew what Lister meant. An experienced operative caught in the act while carrying a supply of Totuus was a recipe for disaster. But Luca had taken precautions for just this eventuality.

"We're protected," Luca said. "I had him and Jackson down a dose of MTW before they went out."

"Thank God for that. How did you ever convince them to take it?"

"I told them they had no choice, that it was a direct order from the Old Man himself."

"Lucky they believed you. Still...MTW is still pretty new. Not much field experience with it. Better pray it worked. Because if it didn't..."

Lister didn't finish the sentence. Didn't have to. If the MTW had failed, Palmer would have spilled everything by now.

The MTWdid work, Luca thought. Ithad to.

"But even if it works perfectly," Lister went on, "you're not off the hook for muffing another operation. And neither am I."

"We didn't muff athing !" Luca said as a cold lump formed in his belly. "The Idaho hotshots blew it."

"The people upstairs don't see it that way. They're out four skilled operatives in two months with nothing to show for it. And they keep asking me, 'Where's the pregnant sim? All our resources at your disposal, a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to her, and what have you come up with?' Do you hear what they're saying, Luca? It used to be, 'When's Portero coming up with something?' Now it's, 'When areyou coming up with something?' Me. Like we're Siamese twins."

Luca thought he heard a tremor in Lister's voice. He'd never known Darryl Lister to be scared. When they'd been pinned down by Taliban mortars outside Gardez, he'd been the picture of cool. But now...

"Shit. I'm sorry, man."

"Hey, we're not dead yet. We've gotten out of tighter places. But they want results by the end of the year."

The end of the year - two weeks!

Luca said, "What about the plate number Snyder spotted on that van last night?"

"Nothing. He must have got it wrong. The number's not in use. Tell Snyder he needs glasses."

Luca didn't think so. More likely the plates were phony, and Palmer and Jackson had been in that van along with Cadman, Sullivan, and who knew who else.

"All right then," Luca said. "What's the status of Cadman and Sullivan now? Do we keep after them?"

"The decision's been made to back off for the time being. They'll be on guard now and - "

"Obviously they werealready on guard."

"Yes, well, be that as it may, they'll be on full alert now, and we can't risk losing any more men. The legal people can put the stall on any discovery motions Sullivan files; we'll find out who's behind them later. Right now concentrate on finding that sim."

"It's possible she's dead," Luca said, hoping it was true. "That cold snap after she escaped was pretty mean. She could have crawled into a pipe somewhere and froze to death."

"Then find her body. Since that fool Eckert started blathering about her being pregnant and the baby's father being human, SimGen stock price has slid six points. Most people think he's crazy, but he's making a lot of investors nervous. And that makes everyone upstairs nervous. You know what SimGen stock means."

Luca nodded. It meant independence for SIRG. No strings, no brakes.

"We've got to find her, Luca. I don't have to tell you what will happen if Eckert or Cadman and Sullivan get to her first."

Luca closed his eyes. That would finish SimGen, finish SIRG, and leave him running for his life.

"They won't."

And to make sure they wouldn't, he had to nail Ellis Sinclair as their informant and serve up his head on a silver platter.