Page 113 of Chain Reaction

Turner said, “We need a plan.”

“For what?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’re only going to remind me what von Moltke said.”

“Best case.”

“We’ll eyeball whatever Bisley was going to eyeball, and then we’ll lure Hennessy and his boys out there, and we’ll persuade them to take no further part in the proceedings. Then I’ll go back to Mountain View and have a quiet word with Saxby Cameron and Axel Brill.”

“What kind of name is Axel?”

“Old Norse again.”

“They sound like a couple of Vikings.”

“I bet they don’t look like Vikings.”

“Suppose they do?”

“I’ll burn them in a longship.”

“What was Bisley going to eyeball?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. I’m trying to think about it like a software guy. It must have been something that felt so weird to him he simply had to go see it for himself.”

“What kind of thing feels weird to a software guy?”

“The kind of thing that feels normal to the rest of us.”

“Like what, for example?”

“I have a private theory. We should start at Aurora Stone and Gravel.”

“You’re obsessed with gravel.”

“There was a lot of it there.”

“Do you like Indian food?”

“How is that connected?”

“For tonight,” she said. “We need to order dinner.”

“Yes, I like Indian food,” he said. “I’ll get butter chicken and garlic naan.”

“No dessert?”

“I should try to eat light.”

—

Axel Brill was taking his third formal meeting with Hennessy, up on the glossy, glassy executive floor, with the wall to wall windows, and the fading afternoon view beyond them. Saxby Cameron was sitting in again. Hennessy looked relatively untroubled. Which made Brill relatively cross. He said, “Explain to me again why you failed in Crystal City?”

“I didn’t fail,” Hennessy said. “I mounted a reconnaissance in force. I flushed out the big man. I manipulated him toward an engagement on terrain of my choosing.”

“You were supposed to eliminate Bisley’s wife.”